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-growth coast 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.

tierneytravels, U.S. National Parks

Mt. Rushmore National Park, Believe the Hype

August 28, 2025October 26, 2025 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

As part of our ambitious and kind of epic roadtrip to Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska, we stopped at Mount Rushmore National Monument in Keystone, South Dakota.

John had been there before I said it was a “must see”, I trusted him but I wondered if it was worth the hype.

It is worth the hype.

Carved from a section of the granite face of 5,725 feet (1745 meters) above sea level Mount Rushmore are the 60 foot tall figures of four former U.S. Presidents: George Washington (1789-1797), Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) and Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865). These four U.S. Presidents are very significant in U.S. History. (A full listing of U.S. Presidents by year if you are curious is at The Presidents Timeline website).

According to the U.S. National Park website: “…surrounded by the beauty of the Black Hills of South Dakota, tell the story of the birth, growth, development and preservation of this country…”

Here was our view of the national monument when you first enter the park:

Actually when we first arrived it was very cloudy and misty and we couldn’t see anything on Mount Rushmore, and then it suddenly cleared to reveal an amazing view.

We walked through the State Flags of U.S. States and it was fun to try and locate the State Flags for states I lived in my lifetime: Pennsylvania (only briefly), New York, Washington, Oregon and Colorado.

After walking through the State Flags we walked down into the amphitheater area where very few visitors were (it felt like we had Mount Rushmore to ourselves compared to the busy upper areas) to spend time just looking at the Mount Rushmore National Monument.

It made us very reflective. After a while of sitting before these mammoth carvings it made us feel as if these four historical U.S. Presidents, each with major contributions, are looking over the U.S. today, watching.

I keep away from political discussions on my blog because I want to respect the different political opinions of others which stem from their life experiences and values, but I do want to share that we just started to wonder: “What would George Washington , Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln this of the U.S. today?. Would they be proud? Did the U.S. become what they hoped it would become?”

Not try to spur any political discussion, I just wanted to share some of our musings as we sat reverently and studied the monument.

After sitting with the monument we went back upstairs and visited the amazing museum exhbit that shared images, history and equipment from the carving/creation of Mount Rushmore October 4, 1927 – October 31, 1941. The exhibit shared photos of the workers who translated the vision of the the Chief Carver. (If you’d like to read the carving history of Mount Rushmore, which involved lots of dynamite see this link Carving History)

This placard in the exhibit particularly moved me:

To close out this post I just want to say that I like to imagine that the “Mount Rushmore Crew”: George Washington , Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are looking over the U.S. and are hopeful that it will transcend the current political situations and the “principles of liberty and freedom on which (the U.S.) was founded” will prevail.

Outside Adventures!, tierneytravels

Breckenridge and the Continental Divide

October 17, 2024October 19, 2024 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Well it’s time to start catching you all up on our travels this Summer into Fall. It might justify why there’s been very little “tierneycreating” except for projects that I can take on trips!

It’s going to be in random order as I think of what adventure I want to share when I write the post. So this post I feel like sharing our trip in early August 2024 to Breckenridge, Colorado with a stop at Loveland Pass on the way where we stood on a section of the Continental Divide.

Loveland Pass

The Continental Divide as defined by Wikipedia :

The Continental Divide extends from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan, and separates the watersheds that drain into the Pacific Ocean from those river systems that drain into the Atlantic and Arctic Ocean, including those that drain into the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and Hudson Bay

Here we are at Loveland Pass at 11,990 feet above sea level (yes the air felt a bit thinner up there!)

It was a gorgeous day and we hiked a bit around the Continental Divide area:

We even found some patches of snow in early August!

Breckenridge, Colorado

After a couple hours at Loveland Pass we headed to Breckenridge, Colorado one of the many skiing towns of Colorado (like Vail, Telluride, Keystone, Steamboat, Aspen, etc) for an overnight visit.

Here are some photos from our time in Breckenridge: