20 December 2014
While I was busy hiking all the trails in the Mid-peninsula Regional Open Space District, I pretty much ignored the other parks and open spaces. But now it’s time to revisit the old friends. Today was for Mission Peak and Sunol.
As always, I went up the southern route, of which Horse Heaven trail is the best-named segment. It rained yesterday, and the trail was squidgy in a lot of places. A difficult hike under the best of circumstances, the mud made it serious hard work today. Well, I need the exercise: two weekends ago, I was on a plane. Last weekend, after flying home, I did a short 8-mile hike on Saturday and a bike ride on Sunday. So I’m out of shape, overdue.
An overcast day, the fog lifting slowly. There were even a few minutes of feeble sunshine toward late morning, but not enough to warm things up. When it greens up, this country is really beautiful.
Flag Hill, above the Sunol visitor center. I sometimes go up there when I want to make this into a killer hike, but I think Sunol is enough for today (15 miles, 4000 feet of climb). And as it turned out, the bridge at Sunol park is closed for repairs, and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to ford the creek anyway.
Once a trail patroller, always a trail patroller. I noted the GPS coordinates of this deadfall and reported it.
I am reminded that the native rock here is shellstone. Nice.
As I start down the front side of Mission peak, my eye is caught by an interesting juxtaposition of rock and tree. I never noticed that before.
I stopped for calories not too far from the top, sat on a bench enjoying the world spread below. The calves in a small herd of cows were cavorting around like puppies. I was impressed by their energy.
Well, it turned out that the calves had good reason to scamper around. The world’s most optimistic coyote was trying its luck. By the time I was near the cows, the calves were over on the other side of the herd, and the adult cows were studiously ignoring the coyote.
Today’s other wildlife sighting was after I had already gone through the parking lot, down the street toward where I had left my car (no one ever parks in the parking lot: it’s always full!).
Nice to get out, nice to do a little work.