THE MUIR RAMBLE ROUTE

The Muir Ramble Route (MMR) is a 310 mile walking and/or cycling trail from San Francisco to Yosemite. It was created and first walked by Peter and Donna Thomas in 2006.

This site is hosted by one of the Sierra Club members involved in creating the John Muir Exhibit, for which we are eternally grateful.

History and description of the MMR

Immediately after John Muir first arrived in California, in April 1868, he walked to Yosemite. The MMR follows the footsteps of that trip. This site gives you information about Muir's trip and directions for following the MMR route.

Muir wrote that he "followed the Diablo foothills along the San José Valley to Gilroy, thence over the Diablo Mountains to valley of San Joaquin by the Pacific pass, thence down the valley opposite the mouth of the Merced River, thence across the San Joaquin, and up into the Sierra Nevada to the mammoth trees of Mariposa and the glorious Yosemite." You can read his full account in both of our books: The Muir Ramble Route or Anywhere that is Wild.

The directions for following the MRR are both on this web site and in our book. We have divided the trip into seven sections. Each section can be walked in a long weekend, with campgrounds or hotels available every night. Following the MRR is a great way to take a self-powered vacation and to see urban, rural, and wild California through John Muir's eyes.

If you click on the map link you will see the path of the MRR compared to Muir's original route. Our research (outlined in the book) found that most of the tiny dirt roads Muir followed in 1868 are now four lane highways or major corridor roadways. Asking ourselves, "What would Muir do?", we decided he would travel, as much as possible, where things were still wild. Our goal then became to use urban trails, bike paths and small roads to create a new "urban backpacking" route that would track as close as was possible to Muir's original route while, passing through as many greenways, parks, and open spaces as possible,.

inspired by Muir's first article describing the trip titled: "Rambles of a Botanist," and to avoid people confusing it with the John Muir Trail, we call this trail the Muir Ramble Route.

THERE IS A COMMONLY TOLD STORY that John Muir would just throw a bag of tea in his pocket, grab some bread, toss a coat over his shoulder and walk to Yosemite. In 2005, while walking the John Muir Trail, Donna Thomas decided she wanted to do what Muir did: step out her front door and walk to Yosemite. She thought it would be easy, "Surely others have done this before me. I will just ask around and find out how to do it. Maybe there is a book.." But she couldn't find anyone who had written about Muir's walking to Yosemite, nor could she could find anyone who had walked from Santa Cruz to Yosemite. Peter joined in the project and together they set out to discover when John Muir had walked to Yosemite. It took a lot of hunting but they finally found Muir had walked from San Francisco to Yosemite in 1868, and that no one knew much about this trip, and no one had ever retraced it. They decided to be the first and follow his footsteps to Yosemite.

ON MARCH 27, 1868, John Muir arrived in San Francisco, having traveled by steamship from New York via Panama. He was thirty, had recently completed walking from Indiana to Florida, and wanted to see Yosemite. The typical traveler took a ferry from San Francisco to Stockton, a stage to Coulterville, and then completed the trip to Yosemite on horseback. John Muir chose to walk. He took a ferry to Oakland, then walked south through the Santa Clara Valley, over the Pacheco Pass, across the San Joaquin Valley to Snelling, up the foothills through Coulterville, and arrived in Yosemite Valley around May 22, 1868.

SINCE JOHN MUIR gave only the most general details of his route, Donna and Peter turned to dusty old maps, from museums and libraries across the state, to fill in the details. Overlaying the old maps with modern ones showed most of the picturesque little roads Muir followed were now major roads and highways. Walking these roads would be pretty grueling, but they were committed by this time and decided to do it anyway. Further study of more specialized modern maps revealed the existence of urban trails, parks and pathways running parallel to Muir's route. This led to the idea of making the trip an "Urban Backpacking" trip, linking these trails and open spaces together while walking as close to Muir's route as possible. Following what they came to think of as Muir's spiritual footsteps, rather than his actual footsteps, they created a three hundred mile SF - Yosemite route that, as much as possible, travels through nature and off the main roads.

PETER AND DONNA THOMAS first walked across California, from San Francisco to Yosemite, in the footsteps of John Muir in April - May of 2006. While on this 33 day 310 mile trip they gave talks at libraries and history museums along the route. The general enthusiasm for what they were doing inspired the Thomases to create a guide book so others could benefit from the research they had done. Realizing most people would not be able to take 30 days off work to follow the complete route, and because there are some places with no legal public sleeping options within a days walk, they divided the trip into 7 sections, each a trip that can be done over a long weekend with places to sleep every night. In 2007-8 they re-walked and cycled these sections of the route several times, alone and with small groups, verifying the directions and logistics, and composing their guide book.

OUR BOOK: The "The Muir Ramble Route," is really three books in one. It is a guide book for a walking or cycling route that crosses California from San Francisco to Yosemite via the Pacheco Pass that following John Muir's footsteps. It is an adventure book, telling the story of our 2006 ramble across California to discover that route. And finally it is a history book, presenting in its entirety and for the first time, the complete story of John Muir’s first trip to Yosemite. Muir took that trip the year before his "First Summer in the Sierra", and it had never been published before this, existing in obscurity, hidden in Muir's various writings, until it we reconstructed it in preparation for our trip to follow John Muir’s footsteps.

If you have any questions, feel free to go to the contact page and send us an email.

Peter and Donna Thomas, Santa Cruz, CA

Click here for information about the Muir Ramble Route guide book

NOTE: This web site was originally created in 2006 to document Peter and Donna Thomas' 2006 "Trans-California Ramble" in John Muir's footsteps from San Francisco to Yosemite, following the route of Muir's first trip to Yosemite taken in 1868. At that point, before google maps and blogspot, the site was hosted by Harold Wood, creator of the Sierra Club's John Muir Exhibit, as www.johnmuir.org/walk.