John McLaren Park and the Philosophers walk

Having stared at the screen too much with powerpoint and also thanks to the blooming white stinky flowers all around Cupertino, the last week has been interesting. In short, the migraines were back. So here are a few overdue blog posts now that I can look at the screen and edit pictures for longer times.

Went with San to SFO for a morning. Had seen posts from a friend who had visited John McLaren park in SFO and taken some photos of the SFO skyline from this park. Wanted to put it on the list on the next visit. Most people in the park don't want to touch your phone to take a photo! COVID has put that fear in people in SFO to a higher level than in Cupertino! Finally a passing Chinese uncle obliged and took this photo for us! 

This park is awesome! They had a beautiful walkway, plenty of benches, manicured scenery, a nice pond with a large trees in the middle with birds, a decent restroom (very important), and trails that took us to a gorgeous view. 

Here are some pictures..

they had things for kids to play, but we saw almost Asian seniors as the only demographic. We stuck out like sore thumbs among the Tai-Chi folks. They knew were were tourists to this park and gave us a silent nod and a smile. Maybe they built this park to be so perfect for seniors? I loved it! 

On the way out we stopped at this cul-de-sac to take this photo of the ocean view! 

A lovely way to spend a few hours. The trail is across the street from the Philosophers walk..it is called Coyote trail and you get an amazing view from the top. If you happen to be in this area and have a few hours to spend, strongly recommend this.

It is one thing to have nice parks in the suburbs. Having something like this in the middle of a bustling city is just amazing!

Monument Peak - aka Cow Paradise

After the Yosemite Firefall adventure, finishing a 60 day yoga challenge and getting a week off from hiking, we went to Monument Peak. 

Started in the morning and were waiting for the Ed R Levin park gates to open at 8AM (there is a parking fee of 6 dollars and they accept cards!). Started hiking right away after parking as we knew the 10 miles of hiking across some steep ascent areas would take us 4+ hours and it did. There was also some time for photos planned in for once!

This is ~2200 feet climb and the wind can make it feel pretty cold past a point. You feel you are above the clouds once you reach the peak. (the photo below is not at the peak, but on the way down..)

This is at the peak..

The views were amazing throughout!

Two things stood out.. 

Cows everywhere, some blocking the hiking path and we had to ask them to move nicely or in some cases go close so they wandered off the trails. This also meant cow dung on the entire trail.. so we were all doing a dance, stepping past the dung.. at the end of the trail, we were all cow dung experts! 

Presenting .. The Monumental cows..

The second thing that stood out was the fields of yellow, white and lavender flowers which made for amazing backdrops but the photos somehow did not even come close to what we saw with our eyes! It was just magical walking through that! 

We were the only ones on the trail on the return loop and that made it interesting for the group! 

The place has no cover and this was the right time to go, given it had rained yesterday.  This hike in summer would have been a lot more challenging. The rolling green hills and rain clouds also made it beautiful..

We had chai on top of Monument peak which was a highlight! Chai tastes amazing after a long hike when your fingers are frozen from the cold winds and altitude!

Here are some more pictures! A beautiful golf course you walk along when coming back to the parking lot..

a flower carpet as far as the eye can see with green rolling hills on one side!

A lone tree on the way back from the peak..

watching the clouds move on top and on the reflections in the water below! 

This is an amazing place for a view of the bay!

the vibrant colors on all the rocks on the hillsides..

the clouds shadows moving over the hills..

A view of snow covered peaks and mountains on the next range, from the top!

interesting rock faces..

and last but not the least.. a candid shot .. didn't know the camera was still rolling.. or I would have gotten into this as well..this is my favorite photo from this hike!

all said and dung, loved this hike!  It was a great feeling getting to the top of Monument peak and staring at nature on one side and what humans have created with the sprawling city scape on the other side!

Wandered off to the edge to take a picture and saw this on a rock!! Was just amazed by how much work has gone into creating and preserving these open spaces so we can enjoy it! 

This made my day!

Today was an interesting day of highs and lows. This blog always presents the positive highlights.. and that is a good thing! The lesson we have learnt recently is to grab opportunities to go outdoors when we can..

Strongly recommend Monument peak hike as a loop by going in reverse, from Agua Caliente trail, as an all morning hike.. this time of the year!

Pedro point and a Pacifica sunset

This weekend saw yet another hike. This one turned out to me more interesting than we had planned.

There were no benches on this one but a small cut log which made for a great view point.. We could sit there for hours and enjoy the breeze!

The idea was to drive to the Devil's slide parking lot and hike to Pedro's point and get a scenic view of the bay and the sunset and come back. The one word in that previous sentence that did not work our way ? "PARKING"

It took us an hour to get there because of the traffic. It was 80 degrees in Cupertino and a nice 71 in the coast. So the entire bay area decided to go there! There was no parking. We tried four different lots around the area and after 50 minutes, we decided to start from the beach by walking along the road to a different trail head. 

Parked outside a strip mall opposite to the beach (there was no beach parking either and there were plenty of bad and irate drivers to make it dangerous to just wait in the parking lot!). That added another mile to the plan each way.. and given we had lost an hour to find parking.. we hiked like never before. 

Amazing views from all sides!

took this picture as we were running down.. 

Things were going great till we went to the top of the view point and realized we were very late. So we decided to take a "private trail" that showed up on Alltrails map that would go directly from the top to Devils slide. This thing turned out to be not much of a trail and was downright dangerous. We were slipping and almost fell. So we decided to climb back up, double up our speed to make it to Devils slide. 

We did get 15 minutes to watch the sun and drink chai before racing back!

It was a pretty steep hike right at the start but the views made up for it. We barely made it to Devils slide as the sun was setting. So we rushed back to the parking (it was all downhill but we had to be careful) and caught the post sunset hues in the beach before driving back!

On a normal day when we would have had an extra hour and parked at the right place, this would have been easy and pleasant. Think we should revisit it on a working day by taking leave just to get parking! 

The sunset experience was refreshing as usual.. 

Strongly recommend this (minus the private trail) on a non busy day!