into the woods

We wandered into the spy shop this morning. A lot of the stuff on the shelves was junky plastic kids' toys-type stuff, though I did kind of like the Sherlock Holmes action figure. There were a few books on spies, weapons for sale, t-shirts for CIA, FBI, and CSI. It was rather disappointing as far as spy shops go.

We spent the rest of the day on a bus trip to Muir Woods and Sausalito. Muir Woods was beautiful. Many of the redwoods there are thousands of years old, and just touching them gave me the shivers. The woods cover a little over 500 acres, which might sound like a lot but really isn't when you consider that before logging began in California, there were about 2 million acres of old growth forest all along the coast.

U.S. Congressman William Kent and his wife purchased about 600 acres of the land in an attempt to protect it. In the early 1900s, a water company wanted to dam Redwood Creek, which would have flooded the valley. Kent objected to this, and the water company took him to court, but he outsmarted them by donating some of the forest to the Federal Government, and then Theodore Roosevelt declared the land a national monument, which was the first time that had been done with land donated by a private citizen. Originally, the site was going to be named after Kent, but he asked that it be named after John Muir, who was a naturalist and conservationist.

In Sausalito, we ended up in an Italian restaurant and had an amazing chicken dinner. Afterwards, we decided to take the ferry back to San Francisco, which may not have been the best idea because it was bitchin' cold and windy by early evening, even more so the closer you got to the water, and we had rather a long wait for the ferry.

I'm now comfortably swaddled in pajamas and blankets, and I've ordered tea from room service, which hopefully will arrive soon. In the meantime, I've broken into my Ghirardelli stash to tide me over, and Shaun of the Dead is on TV. Someone remind me to go see Hot Fuzz when it comes out.