Exploring San Jose's Environs

Castle Rock State Park

One of the things we've been really excited about is exploring the local parks and natural areas around San Jose. For those who are not very familiar with the area San Jose is at the southern end of San Francisco's bay. The area that forms San Jose and many of the "Silicon Valley" suburbs is a flat plane bounded by two low mountain ranges to the east and west. Some of the more famous suburbs like Palo Alto (think Stamford) and Mountain View (think Google) are both on this plane and up into the foothills of the western mountain range.

One of the goals we've set for ourselves is to go and explore as much as we can. We're saving the longer distance trips for a tiny bit later in the year. Lately we've been focused on nearby weekend explorations to get our "footing".

This past weekend we visited Castle Rock State Park. First, we drove up a wonderfully windy road. Think of it really as a cow path that is really one lane wide with switchback and blind turns. Really fun!! (Frankly I think it would have been good to close it off to cars and just give it over to the bicycles.)

Once we reached the top of the ridge we set out to explore one of the local parks trails. We hiked to Goat Rock (I believe so named because to climb it you needed to be nimble and brave as a mountain goat!!) To get to the top which had wonderful vistas of the Pacific we had to climb through beautiful old redwood forests. There were lovely holly bushes all along the trails as well.

Nye, Arch, and I tried to measure a few of these beauties but we soon realized that it would have taken more like 6-8 people to link hands around them!




Calero State Park & Ranch

On Sunday we set off to see Nye's new friend Ivy Bennington at her riding lessons at Calero State Park. After we had a picnic and took a hike. The kids really enjoyed spotting animal tracks (coyote, "puma", black tailed deer, and herons. Note only one of these is a fiction fact!) The landscape at the park seemed pretty typical of the area south of San Jose. The kids spent a lot of productive time searching for "gems" and "crystals as well.

We didn't spot too many animals but we did finally see a few flocks of wild turkeys as the browsed in the fields and stole hay seeds from the hay barn.

One of the more fun things that Sara discovered is that many of the trees at this time of year have these funny green plants that are sort of hanging off them. I asked a colleague about them and it turns out they are Misteltoe. Nearby the museum the clumps are about the size of a small basket ball. But when we went to Calero State Park, well take a look at the clumps of Mistel toe! These were easily the size of a cooler.

We're delighted to get some time to explore as a family. We're looking forward finding more parks and places for Nye and us to find discoveries large and small.

Best,

Sara, Archil & Nye