More on our roadtrip around Northern California with our Sacramento-area based friends earlier this month. Went part of a day at the Muir Woods National Monument.
According to Wikipedia:
“Muir Woods National Monument is a United States national monument managed by the National Park Service and named after naturalist John Muir. It is located on Mount Tamalpais near the Pacific coast in southwestern Marin County, California. The Monument is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and is 12 miles (19 km) north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres (224 ha),[4] of which 240 acres (97 ha) are old-growthcoast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests,[5] one of the few such stands remaining in the San Francisco Bay Area.“
John Muir (1838–1914) was a Scottish-Born American naturalist, author, and early advocate for the preservation of the U.S. wilderness. Known as the “Father of the National Parks,” his writings inspired the creation of the National Park System and he co-founded the Sierra Club in 1892.
(Source: Google AI)
Fortunately we began our trek through the Muir Woods at 9:00 am before the crowds arrived (by 11 am it was very crowded).
Wow these trees are old! Here is a tree cross section exhibit they had along the path of a tree that was a 1000+ years old:
We came upon an area called “Cathedral Grove” and I appreciated the signage as well as information I learned in the cafe later about this section of the Muir Woods:
Of course I couldn’t control myself, I had to let my inner “Ansel Adams” run free and snap a couple B&W photos while wandering the woods:
I took more but I won’t embarrass myself further by sharing more – ha!
We were able to get a stamp on and sticker for our National Parks Passport that we are obsessed with. It’s been fun to get the rubber stamp mark that we were there and the sticker for the national park or monument whenever we are visiting one!
Below is an example of the little passport book and the inside pages to mark that you visited a park:
Postscript
While road tripping in Northern California, I brought my English Paper Piecing (EPP) project to work on – I worked on sewing the individual hexagons together for some of my EPP rosettes (see post ScrapHappy May 2026 – Moving Along on the EPP Quilt).
But disaster stuck and I lost one of the rosettes I was working on somewhere in my travels!!!
So now I only have 98 instead of the 99 I made for this quilt 😦
So before I can finish the quilt I had to make another rosette from scratch (pout, pout, pout)!
I’ve decided not to travel with them again, I will bring a knit or crochet project instead.
(I was struggling to write this post with all the terrible stuff going in my country and in the world. Writing about my 2025 travels seems so shallow and trivial; but perhaps this post will be a brief distraction for you if you are feeling like I am…)
July 2025
Early in July we headed to Washington State in the Pacific NW to visit John’s cousin M and his wife R in Bremerton, WA. During the trip to Washington we also visited Poulsbo, Olympia, Mount Rainier National Park, Shelton (quilt shop), Port Townsend, and Port Angelas Washington. We also did a 24 hour trip to Victoria, British Columbia (Canada) via ferry.
Here are a couple photos from parts of the trip I did not blog about – the delightful Victorian-style Bed & Breakfast we stayed at in Olympia; an afternoon at Mount Rainier, and Poulsbo (Norway themed historic town founded by Norwegian settlers) for July 4th with John’s cousin:
Continuing the summer travel insanity, in August we went on two more major trips: 1) a roadtrip to South Forks Colorado to visit with some of John’s family; and 2) a trip to Southern Oregon and Northern California.
Both of these trips in my opinion are blog post worthy (and there was a very cool quilt shop visit during that first trip) so I will plan to post about them sometime in 2026. For now here are some random photos from the trips.
South Fork, Colorado: We stayed at an amazing cabin on the river with very unusual toilet paper holders!
We were pretty traveled out by September and managed to keep September to one major trip for John but two for me!
I went to with my sister to San Antonio, Texas to join her on her business trip. Then I went with John to Portland, Oregon for him to visit his son Z while I took at Watercolor Painting class (see post So I took a Watercolor Painting class…).
I didn’t post about the San Antonio, Texas trip but my sister and I had a wonderful time and I slept in the best hotel bed EVER at the luxurious resort (do not remember the name) her company put her up at. We had fun after her work conference exploring San Antonio’s Riverwalk and eating tasty Tex-Mex on the river.
October 2025
We did one major trip in October and then had two separate out of town visitors during the month. In early October we headed to Baltimore, Maryland and visited my brother and his family in Delaware as well as my long time blogging friend Claudia (some of you follow her blog). Then we met up with my sister and her son and we traveled to Ocean City, Maryland to attend the Country Calling Music Festival. After that we traveled to New York City for a couple days with them.
I bought a cowboy hat while in San Antonio, Texas in September. In case you are wondering how we ended up going to Country Calling, my 21 year old nephew is a huge country music fan and wanted to go to his first country music festival so we went as a family group. It was an interesting “cultural experience” I’ve never had before!
November 2025
We had decided to take November and December off from major trips but then our plan fell apart due to fun trip opportunity temptation…
I went with my sister to New York City on her business trip; and then John and I went to Las Vegas, Nevada for his poker tournament. I posted about the Las Vegas trip related to over the top Christmas decorations in the post Christmas at the Bellagio Conservatory.
I plan to post sometime in 2026 about the New York City trip in November as I had a couple amazing experiences. Here is a photo of my sister and I enjoying our trip for now:
December 2025
And finally December…
You’d think we’d take the month off from traveling with the holidays but no we did not. We went to Hollywood, Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida – see post A Little Jaunt to Florida; and we spent a couple days before the New Year in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
I didn’t post about the Colorado Springs trips but here are some photos from the lovely lobby/lounge area of the historic Colorado hotel we stayed at – the Mining Exchange Hotel :
In 2025 I think I traveled more than I’ve ever traveled in my life (I feel like I was rarely home in 2025). John retired at the end of 2024 and we sort of went crazy with our new found freedom in 2025 (plus our beloved dog Mike had passed in July 2024 so we had no restrictions on planning travel – no more dog sitter needed).
We started out slow with one big trip a month and then picked up speed around May with cramming in more than one trip a month (you’ll see how crazy our summer got later in this post).
I didn’t post about all the trips – I as taking a blogging break for my mental health in the first quarter of 2025 and then I just couldn’t keep up with writing about my trips and traveling. If there is a related post I have linked it.
I’ve organized our 2025 travel summary by month and I did not include any day trips/playing tourist in Colorado for the day. We did have a lot of spontaneous day trips, especially when the weather was nice, in 2025.
January 2025
We began our year of travel with a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada so John could attend a poker tournament. I did not post about it.
Visiting with designer Elizabeth Hartman (whose patterns I love) during QuiltCon:
March 2025
In March we had a wonderful trip to the Sacramento, California region to hang out with our Northern California friends.
I didn’t post about the trip, but here is a photo from the trip during our wander around downtown Auburn, CA at the top of the stairs on the Placer County Superior Court on a gorgeous day (by the way I am not actually that much taller than John it was the angle/pose):
April 2025
In April John traveled to Portland to visit his son; and I went to spend a couple days with my sister in Baltimore, WA on her business trip. I did not post about it.
Here I am at this amazing and legendary Italian deli/grocery store in Baltimore we ate at twice – DiPasquales Italian Market:
There was seating right in the corner of the crowded market/deli where you are crammed in with the spices and pasta while you eat! But for me nothing beats East Coast Italian food (well short of actual Italian food in Italy…) so go ahead and cram me in among the groceries!
May 2025
In May we began having more than one big trip a month; and May was a month filled with travel to two concerts in two different parts of the US.
A trip mid May to Charlotte, North Carolina to see Joan Jett and Billy Idol in concert with North Carolina based friends: Concerting in the Carolinas and More
And then later in May, to celebrate my milestone birthday, we went to Las Vegas, Nevada and saw Bruno Mars – Birthday-ing with Bruno
June 2026
In June we had two EPIC roadtrips through Colorado.
Hundreds and hundreds of miles were traveled early in June and then if that wasn’t enough roadtripping for the month, we did a truly epic roadtrip across Colorado (like from one end of the other) in mid June (because we are truly insane…).
I never got around to posting this “across Colorado” roadtrip but in the span of a week we traveled to Pagosa Springs, Durango, Mesa Verde National Park, Four Corners National Monument (where Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico intersect), Ouray, Gunnison, and Crested Butte, Colorado. From the Denver Metro area to across the entire state and back! EPIC!!!
I do plan to write some posts in the future about this cool trip as I’d like to share some memories on my blog. It is one of my favorite roadtrips of all time…to date!
Here is one of my favorite photos from this roadtrip: John peeking in on the poker game of a group of taxidermied raccoons at a gift shop in Ouray, Colorado!
I think I will end this post before we get to July 2025 – a lot more traveling adventures to share in Part 2…
I will blog about Frontier Days, Mount Rushmore, Wind Caves and Badlands National Parks, the Crazy Horse Memorial in separate posts, but for this post I will share some photos from our wander around downtown Rapid City, South Dakota.
Before heading to Wind Cave National Park and Badlands National Park, we stopped for a break in downtown Rapid City. It was my kind of place as it had a USED BOOKSTORE and a QUILT SHOP!
AGAIN BOOKS & BAZAAR
At Again Books & Bazaar I bought some used CDs (a future post about how I’ve rediscovered our stereo and CD player) and enjoyed looking at their large collection of used books.
QUILT CONNECTION, ETC.
What a lovely surprise to find Quilt Connection, Etc. quilt shop in downtown Rapid City! The staff was welcoming, helpful and friendly and they had a wonderful fabric selection.
If that wasn’t enough to be a friendly quilt shop with a lovely fabric selection, they had a surprise area downstairs…
That had this rack…
And if that wasn’t enough downstairs also had this magical tub…
I am always up to a challenge so I immediately worked on how many fabric scraps I could shove into the bag!
I made my way back up the stairs to see John patiently waiting in “The Husband Seating Area”:
They had many quilts on display and I really liked this Mount Rushmore quilt and this teal quilt which makes me thing of the teal quilts that Kate @talltalesfromchiconia coordinates each year for annual the Ovarian Cancer fundraiser.
But the quilt that really made me smile was this “Mrs. Bobbins” quilt with very humorous panels that only a quilter or someone who lives with a quilter can related to:
So what did I buy at the quilt shop? Well I got a $5 fill a bag, bag of fabric scraps stuffed to the max; and this Riley Blake National Parks Map panel:
tierneycreates 