Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures - Muir Woods

My next post about the Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures is part of a series of parks that the wife and I hit while we were visiting the wineries in the Sonoma Valley.

You can find more Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures as well as my Geological State Symbols Across America series at my website Dinojim.com.

This post relates to the California Geological State Symbols post that came out earlier this week.

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Muir Woods National Monument

There isn't a lot of geology at this park, but we got some great tree pictures.

 Our entrance sign photo.

Although not specifically geological in nature, Muir Woods is a fascinating walkthrough of a coastal redwoods sanctuary. These are the tallest living things on the planet with the tallest tree in the park reaching about 258 feet tall. These are also very old trees as you can see by the dendrochronology listed above of a tree that had fallen down back in the 1930's that was over 1,000 years old! 

 Muir Woods is located within a rather isolated canyon near to San Francisco. It is this canyon that helped preserve the woods from destruction until the time it could be protected. The canyon environment causes enough water to fall for the trees to live on and the forest is often shrouded in fog, cooling it down and providing year round moisture. Many of the neighboring regions have very low yearly rainfall totals, making this an oasis of sorts. Being in a canyon also made it difficult to get a nice overview shot of the canyon on our visit since the entire park was shrouded in fog during the duration of our visit.

 One issue with the size of these trees is trying to get a decent photo of the entire trees from the ground. Here is my attempt at a vertical panorama.

 Here is Redwood Creek located within the Muir Woods NM and as you can tell, one of the few shots of actual rocks I could get within the densely forested park.

 Coastal redwoods with wife for scale.

 Some interesting tangle of branches.

Looking up at the tree crown.