Another day, another hike

It's the last day of the memorial weekend and we packed up some lunch and headed to Coal Creek.

It's amazing how much of a difference the microclimate in San Francisco really makes - by just driving one hour south we left the grey skies behind and stepped into summer!

Alfie ate loads of grass so I'm sure he's planning to vomit all night :-)

Then again he might just dream about the runaway cow!


Jelte pointing towards SF in the distance...

Starting the memorial weekend with a stroll in the sun

We left a foggy and grey San Franciso, crossed the bridge and found some sun.

Romantic Tree

Hello - it's been awhile since I posted anything on this blog, so thought I'd catch you up what we've been up the these last couple of months.

5 Year Wedding Anniversary

On March 6th we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary. As you might know, wood is the traditional gift for the 5th anniversary...... and I think we now have more wood than we can use up in a lifetime! Instead of buying a simple wooden frame, or a wooden box - my husband found us a celebratory Redwood tree!

Looking for the number tag

Trees - A Brief History

I have always loved trees and the big outdoors, and as you might remember the theme for our actual wedding was green and brown, the colours of the forest. Since we moved to California, the mighty Redwood forests have found a very special place in my heart, and we both love hiking in the Redwood parks nearby.

So getting an actual Redwood tree for our anniversary was incredible, and knowing that we help support these forests felt really good too.

the number tags were not easy to spot

Finding the perfect tree

We took a day out to go look for the perfect tree in Butano park. Alfie came along and sniffed the entire forest, just to make sure we picked the right tree.

We had been given a simple map showing us roughly where the trees we could chose from were hidden.

Searching

The trees themselves were not marked out in any way, the only way to find them was to locate some of their bigger brothers that were numbered with tiny little number plates and put on the map.

Finding the perfect tree was hard.

Some were too skinny.

Some looked like they might not last much longer.

Some were too crowded by other trees.

And some were just too close to the road.

Then we stepped into a part of the forest where the trees grew further apart, letting in just enough light to create a magical place beneath the canopy.

Magical forest

And that's where we found our tree.

Right next to a fallen Redwood, creating a perfect seating arrangement for picnics right next to our tree.

We named it the Liebrand tree and it's totally awesome.

it's that one

it's the one behind us

Alfie got bored and went sniffing