Holy Crap it was a nice day for a hike! by Cl. "watch out for the road apples" Panic, guest blogger

Spring has sprung.

Which means that it was a perfect day for a hike. My good friend from Australia was in town and we decided to try out a new hiking spot at the Henry Cowell State Park. It was also good weather to take Tiburon out for a spin, so off we went. Until we stopped along with all of the other traffic on the freeway. Apparently it was also a great day for the beach, which meant that traffic on the 17 heading into Santa Cruz was backed up to San Jose since every resident of the Silicon Valley flocked to the ocean.†

Acting on a whim, we redirected ourselves to an old standby: the Phleger Estate. It's been nearly a year since my last visit to Phleger, but given the variety of trails and ample parking, it seemed like a safe bet, and avoided the need to deal with Santa Cruz traffic. And so we wound our way through the quaint village of Woodside and into the Huddart County Park. Trail map in hand and poorly identified trails ahead, we were off...

I don't remember the large amount of horse shit on my last trip to Phleger. I mean there was a ton of crap along most of the trails. No killer mountain bikers, just killer road apples.

The park was eerily quiet. Not many other hikers, but there was this one jogger guy that was way too in shape; he lapped us and was moving at the same fast clip whether going uphill or down. Bastard.

We saw a lot of squirrels and lizards. No banana slugs though. Come to think of it, I've never seen a banana slug on any of my hikes. Maybe they know that I carry salt in my back pocket?

I was able to capture a nice macro shot of a flower (a Redwood Sorrel, according to Prof. KIA), and also some strange web-nest-thing. Hey NN: does Professor Know it All have anything to say about the caterpillar orgy?

Did anyone notice that the moon was visible all day? And there were no clouds in the sky? I mean, it was absolutely beautiful out.

After the hike we decided me might try to sneak into Half Moon Bay via Highway 84. No such luck. Traffic was backed up all the way to the 280. Guess the beach will have to wait ...

† Presumably this did not include the Nus who were likely trapped in retail hell trying to solve Mr. Nonny Nu's crisis.