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Joseph D Grant County Park
Joseph D Grant County Park is located east of San Jose near Mt. Hamilton and Lick Observatory. The parking pay station accepts credit cards, which is brilliant. All of the park is grazed by cattle, with miles and miles of oak woodland habitat. You can see all the way to downtown San Jose from the taller hills.
This was the first hike I’ve followed with my GPS that had an accurate description of distance and estimated hiking time. Which was excellent, as I started out late in the morning.
Stats:
Distance: 7.3 mi
Time: 3.5 hours
Average Speed: 2 mph
Elevation Change: 1600 ft
All of the hike took place along ranch roads. I only came across one herd of cows, and a few other hikers – the lack of crowds was pleasant. The views and wildlife were overall not very exciting; I think I prefer the chaparral habitat in the Santa Cruz mountains to ranchlands in the Diablo Range. There are lots of trails in the park and lots of options for creating loops of different lengths. The Eagle Lake hike via the Hotel Trail might be another nice option to hike one day. There are small stock ponds in the hills that provide habitat for California red-legged frogs and California tiger salamanders – it would be fun to survey this park in the spring! There were lots of raptors in the park as well, mostly red-tailed haws and red-shouldered hawks, and all very noisy and used to people.
Birds seen/heard: Double-crested cormorant, great blue heron, Canada goose, mallard, northern shoveler, bufflehead, ruddy duck, turkey vulture, red-shouldered hawk, California quail, American coot, willet, northern flicker, acorn woodpecker, black phoebe, Hutton’s vireo, Steller’s jay, western scrub jay, American crow, common raven, horned lark, oak titmouse, bushtit, white-breasted nuthatch, ruby-crowned kinglet, western bluebird, European starling, yellow-rumped warbler, California towhee, spotted towhee, savannah sparrow, song sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, western meadowlark.
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The Name of the Wind
The Name of the Wind
by Patrick Rothfuss
I enjoyed this book, overall. The writing was decent, and the author wrote intuitively about human psychology with a lovely introspective first-person narration. I found the main character, Kvothe, to be moderately aggravating – he allows his life’s goal, which he seeks passionately throughout much of the book, to be put aside when he could win it with a little effort and patience. Also, Kvothe repeatedly meets his challenges with the care of a bull in a china shop, and somehow manages to emerge from them heroically. Throughout, I didn’t find his story a fair accounting of life’s lessons. In addition, the main character’s tale is largely narcissistic, with little development of additional characters.
The climax of the tale was incongruent with the majority of the book, which was a bit disappointing. The goings-on of the present time (this story is told from the perspective of the character relating his tale to another character) are an interesting twist, and add a bit of suspense and flavor to the story. The antagonists are also highly interesting and mysterious, leaving the reader excited to learn more about them (kudos to the author).
I would like to see Kvothe learn and develop who he is based on the circumstances presented to him, instead of crashing from one situation to the next without and turning his life into a train-wreck (though, granted, the reader knows this to be an eventuality). I would also like to see this character challenged more, instead of getting through situations easily with ridiculous talent and intelligence. Alas, I think the next book transitions from wizarding to sword-fighting.
A recommended read, for anyone who hasn’t beaten me to it yet 
Nisene Marks State Park
The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park is a small state park in Aptos that is popular with local joggers and mountain bikers. There were a lot of people walking, jogging, and biking along the park’s entrance road and main fire road throughout the day. Parking inside the park is $8, and they have a park map for $5 or you can just take a photo of the map posted at the main entrance station. The map was pretty good and the trails were well-signed.
This was supposed to be a 12-mile loop hike from the closed gate at the George’s Picnic Area lot. I’m not sure why it turned out to be 14 miles instead – my best guess is that the distance was measured at 12 miles from the second locked gate, which was about 1 mile up the trail from where we were able to park.
Stats:
Distance: 14.6 miles
Time: 7 hr 43 min
Average Speed: 2 mph
Elevation Change: 1284 feet
A lot of our hike took place along the park’s main fire road. It seems to be mostly used by mountain bikers, and only the bottom few miles show evidence of recent use by cars. Along the road are historical signs that talk about the logging and milling that used to take place in the park. The park wilderness is far from pristine, with a thin understory that appears to be thinned by controlled burns, and only occasional groves of older redwoods. There are lots of pretty redwood trees along the trails, and quite a few deciduous trees as well. The trails were lined with lots of non-native vegetation. There wasn’t any poison oak, though!
We left the car at about 9:15am and chose to hike the Aptos Creek Trail to Five Finger Falls, and then down the Big Slide Trail. The Aptos Creek Trail leads past the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. After this point the trail is technically closed due to a “wash out”, which is actually a giant chunk of missing hillside. There were ropes set up at the wash out so that we could go up and over the missing trail (this was actually pretty fun). The downside to the closed trail was that between the wash out and the falls, the trail wasn’t maintained. We did all right for awhile, but when we hit switchbacks we lost the trail and wound up climbing straight up a steep hillside instead of switchbacking around it. This was exceedingly difficult and time-consuming, but we were easily able to find the trail again once we got to the top.
Five Finger Falls was very cute, and we stopped for lunch there at about 1:30pm. We were quite tired by this point and eager to make our way back to the fire road. The Big Slide Trail was mostly uphill, and it sort of kicked our asses. I made myself a walking stick when we got back to the fire road. The 5-mile hike back to the car from here was easy and downhill, and we passed lots of mountain bikers. We got back to the car at about 5pm, tired and with very sore feet.
Birds seen/heard: Band-tailed pigeon, hairy woodpecker, Nuttall’s woodpecker, Steller’s jay, chestnut-backed chickadee, Pacific wren, ruby-crowned kinglet, varied thrush, Townsend’s warbler.
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