Watch out for the Ewoks

More about those Ewoks later. Yesterday was a day for sight-seeing in Marin County, north of the Golden Gate Bridge. Before we could go anywhere, we needed a car and Avis kindly obliged. In a moment of weakness, I agreed to hear a pitch to join their membership program. The good. A kind man with a deep voice and a rich southern accent spoke with me. The bad. He was reading a script that took a very long time to read with no breaks. The good. After agreeing to a trial membership at $1/month and giving him my date of birth, he twigged it was my birthday and said "Well golly, gosh Mr. Moran, its your birthday. Many happy returns." The bad. One easily hooked Irish-man signed up right there.

So, a compact car powering us, we crossed the bridge and stopped at the Lighthouse Cafe in Sausalito for a coffee and a bit of grub. I watched the cook make my 3-egg omellette with hot italian sausage, spinage, mushroom and onion, and the result was a thing of beauty. Crossing the street to settle the bellies we strolled through a couple of Sausalito's many marinas. There are a lot of live-one houseboats moored here with a variety of styles.

On and up and around some twisty bends to see the giant redwoods of Muir Woods National Park. The trees grow tall and straight dwarfing humans staring at them from below. Being a Monday, the crowds were small and once off the main trail, there was a great sense of quiet with just the gurgling of the creeks below. The reference to the Ewoks above comes from George Lucas using an almost identical forest in Redwood National Park, Northern California to shoot the Ewok scenes on the Moon of Endor for Star Wars, The Return of the Jedi. I saw that movie as an 11 year old in the Ambassador cinema in Dublin and in my head, I could hear the sounds of the storm troopers lasers zinging through the trees.

More fine photos available at Knud's flickr photo collection.