A drive to Stinson Beach yesterday produced these unexpected views of purple heather covering the hillside north of Muir Beach.

Although I’ve made this same drive many times before, I’d never seen the heather.

I suspected that heather isn’t native to Muir Woods, and after some Internet research this morning figured out that the heather is a remnant of a now-defunct 100-year-old commercial heather farm formerly known as Banducci. The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy now owns the land, and I suspect the heather, once cultivated there, just persists naturally.

Once at Stinson, I ran into these goats and fell in love with them. They were so still that from far away they looked like some hippie’s inexplicable load of stuffed animals he left tied to his roof.

Look at those velvety ears!