Climbing Shoreline Highway out of Tam Valley toward Mount Tamalpais — the shift from town to mountain, and the fog-fed watershed that feeds the redwoods ahead.
Feel the road start to climb and curve? You're leaving the flatland of Tam Valley behind and heading up into the country of Mount Tamalpais — the big peak that rules this corner of Marin, and the reason the redwoods ahead of us even exist. Look up when the trees allow, and you'll catch its long green ridgeline. The locals just call it Mount Tam.
Here's the wonderful thing it does: standing about twenty-five hundred feet over the ocean, it reaches up and combs the fog rolling in off the Pacific, wringing water out of the air and dripping it down into the canyons on its flanks. One of those fog-fed canyons is Muir Woods. So we're driving up onto the very mountain that makes the whole forest possible. Stay on Shoreline Highway as it winds upward, ease off the gas — and in a little while, watch for our turn onto Panoramic Highway. I'll call it well before it comes.
Photo: Richard Wood · CC BY-SA 3.0
