The photos with this post are all from my visit to Butano State Park. I visited Butano on Tuesday afternoon on my drive up the coast highway to the bay area. It is a small park located just up the coast highway from Ano Nuevo State Park, the elephant seal home. I stopped at Butano because I wanted to see redwoods and I didn’t want to drive a whole lot.
When people think redwoods, Muir Woods in Marin come to mind. This is certainly the most famous grove of old growth trees, but further south, just north of Santa Cruz is an equally nice grove in Big Basin State Park. On Tuesday though even Big Basin seemed to far to drive. The nice park ranger at Ano Nuevo steered me towards Butano. It was a state park, it had redwoods and it was only ten miles away.
The park is located in a steep and narrow vale. It is above sea level by about a couple of thousand feet or maybe more. The park has drive slow, newt crossing signs. It also has bright yellow banana slugs, but most importantly it had redwoods. Only a few seemed to rival the size of the ones in either Big Basin or Muir Woods. Even so Butano was a nice park.
Wednesday and Thursday work days. I had meetings all day on both days. I made a presentation on Wednesday. The presentation went well, but not with out a hiccup. My slides had not arrived. A phone call and some yeoman service by my hosts got me back on track. It would have looked bad to have had all this fun without something to show for it.
I have been hanging out with “the guys” for too long this last week. The U.S. Open was attended by mainly guys. I estimate that about 80% of the audience was male. At Ano Nuevo the elephant seal population was 90% male. Their breeding season is in the winter. After breeding season both sexes leave to feed and replenish their strength. The females return first, molt and the leave again. When I visited the park, it was the guys turn on the beach. My two day meeting was 95% men. Our evening dinner parties were 100%. I looking forward to greeting one special woman at the Saint Louis airport tonight.