Road trip trivia for kids: 46 questions with answers

Orange. It's called International Orange, and it was picked so ships could see the bridge in the fog. And the "Golden Gate" is really the name of the water underneath it!

Each of the two towers rises 746 feet above the water and 500 feet above the road.

A little over four years, or 1,604 days.

The bridge is named after the water it crosses. Around 1846, explorer John C. Frémont named this strait the Golden Gate, because it reminded him of a harbor in Istanbul called the Golden Horn.

In the middle of the channel, the water is about 372 feet deep, and strong tides rush in and out.

The bridge crosses two ship channels, and the road climbs high over each one so ships can pass underneath. In between, the road dips down.

Cars heading west, toward San Rafael, drive on the upper deck. Cars heading east, toward Richmond, drive on the lower deck, underneath.

It honors Robin Williams, the funny actor who voiced the Genie in Disney's Aladdin.

In 1970, crews painted a rainbow only over the northbound entrance, the one you see driving from the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin. No one is sure why.

Traffic lights at each end let cars go one way for five minutes at a time, then switch to the other direction. That is why people call it the Five-Minute Tunnel.

Never. No enemy ship ever came. Fort Point is a fort that never had to fight.

Plans for the bridge in the 1930s called for removing the fort. Chief engineer Joseph Strauss redesigned the bridge to save it, and today the fort sits under an arch that holds up the roadway.

Abraham Lincoln. He even named his son after his friend.

No. The brick fort tucked under the south end of the bridge, on the San Francisco side, is Fort Point.

Under dirt and grass. From the ocean, it looked just like a normal hill.

It had three 12-inch guns, and each shell weighed 1,000 pounds, much heavier than a grown-up.

A cannon. Boom, every half hour, all night long.

The first lighthouse was built too high on the hill. California fog often sits up high, so the light got hidden.

Yes. It still shines through its original glass Fresnel lens from 1855, and the Coast Guard keeps the light and fog signal working.

Island of pelicans. Next time you see a big brown bird diving into the bay, give it a wave.

Banana slug. Yellow, slimy, and totally not for eating.

Banana slugs, deer, chipmunks and squirrels live on the forest floor. Coho salmon, steelhead trout and giant salamanders live in Redwood Creek, and northern spotted owls and bats fly among the branches.

Egrets. They stand super still, then zap, they catch a fish.

Yes. Harbor seals visit Richardson Bay.

Shark. Chomp chomp!

On average, the redwoods are 600 to 800 years old, and some are more than 1,000 years old.

The tallest coast redwood in Muir Woods is 258 feet tall.

A sleeping lady. Shhh, don't wake her up!

The name comes from the Coast Miwok language. California State Parks says it roughly means "bay mountain" or "coast mountain."

TAM-ul-PIE-us. Most people around here just call it Mount Tam.

Lupine.

No, they are different plants, though both have tall stems topped with many flowers.

Nobody. Every single person made it to the beach safely.

Sometimes. Parts of the ship's engine lie under the sand at the south end of the beach at Tennessee Cove.

Ships. Ninety-three of them, in just three and a half years.

A huge working model of San Francisco Bay, about 1.5 acres, inside an old Marinship warehouse.

Gravity. The same thing that makes your ball roll downhill.

Because its track twisted back and forth up the mountain, with 281 curves and 22 trestles in 8.19 miles.

Because of a sawmill. In the 1830s, John Thomas Reed built the first sawmill in Marin County beside Cascade Creek, in what is now Old Mill Park.

Corte Madera is Spanish. Madera means wood, and corte comes from cortar, which means to cut. So the name is usually translated as "cut wood" or "a place where wood is cut."

In 1775, Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed into San Francisco Bay and anchored in the cove now called Ayala Cove. He and his pilot named the island Isla de los Ángeles, Spanish for Angel Island.

By boat! There are no roads or bridges to Angel Island.

About 1.25 miles across the bay.

There are 21. The Spanish began building them in 1769. Mission San Rafael was number 20, founded in 1817.

To be a hospital. Many Native people at Mission Dolores in San Francisco were sick, and San Rafael's milder weather was thought to help patients get better.

About 680 steps, in three long flights that climb from Old Mill Park up to Sequoia Valley Road.