Calero Park, Santa Clara County, California

 Waxing Gibbous Moon

Holy Hospitality, I heard that Calero Park has something called the Calero Bat Inn, so I had to go! Would I see the Batcave? The Batmobile? The BATMAN??? I was excited for this hike!

Calero Park is about 30 miles from my camp, near the southern edge of the San Jose city limits. It includes the Calero Reservoir and about 25 miles of hiking trails. Catch-and-release fishing is allowed in the reservoir, as are boats, but swimming and wading are prohibited. The park rules mention hikers, dogs, and equestrians on the trails, but they do not mention bicyclists, so I'm not sure about them. Instructions include a section called "Be Considerate" which warns people to "use particular caution when passing children, senior citizens, and people with dogs." Haha, senior citizens are dangerous! Watch out for me!

Yesterday was cool, breezy, and mostly overcast with occasional sprinkles, but I didn't mind and I still managed to squeeze in a two and a half hour stroll on easy-to-moderate, very clean, and well-marked  trails. I walked through grasslands and wooded areas along Calero Creek on the Figueroa Trail up to the intersection with the Serpentine Loop, which eventually led me to the much anticipated Calero Bat Inn. Major cumulonimbus cloud formations provided great backdrops for the rolling scenery. The visible wildlife consisted mostly of Steller Jays, turkey vultures, and bushy-tailed tree squirrels, although I saw signs of deer and coyote along the way. Plant life was represented mainly by live oaks, bay trees, and manzanitas lining the creek, with fiddlenecks, blue dicks, California poppies, and what I think were yellow hayfield tarweeds, judging from the wildflower poster at the trailhead. I don't know how to identify different grasses, but there was definitely a lot of grass and it didn't all look the same.

On the edge of a dry segment of the creek bed was a small, alluring, cave-like feature inset into a cut bank. It was the perfect size for a bobcat. I wanted to get closer, but I decided that if, by chance, it really was a bobcat den, Mr. and/or Ms. Bobcat probably wouldn't want me poking around in there. I snapped a quick picture and moved on.

It didn't take long to reach the Serpentine Loop. I had to decide if I wanted to do the whole loop or just the part that led to the Calero Bat Inn. The sky got pretty dark about then, so I opted for a shorter hiking day. The segment I did was not too interesting except for some long views that included part of the reservoir. The serpentinite outcrops were not impressive - maybe the other part of the loop is where the cool rocks are, so I'll do that next time. The purpose of this trip after all was simple: to investigate the ballyhooed Calero Bat Inn!

And then, all of a sudden, there it was, behind a wooden fence, with a weathered, framed educational poster, up on stilts, made of wood, with hinged doors, painted brown, in a grassy field, the Calero Bat Inn. Ta Da! Oh Boy! I was there!

Holy Hand Grenade, was the Calero Bat Inn ever a dud. Surely the Calero bats deserve better than this! A Calero Bat Motel 6 would put his place to shame! I didn't really expect to see any bats in the middle of the day, much less any Batman accoutrements, but I DID expect a more interesting bat-house structure. This thing was little more than a rickety, tall, tower-like covering for a biggo pile of bat guano. Holy Bat Commode!

Well, anyway, life goes on. I got some good exercise and I saw yet another little patch of California in my ongoing, multi-decade quest to walk every still available goldurn inch of my beautiful, shining Golden State homeland. 

Batman, however, needs to step up his game. He should hop in his Batmobile and show up at the Calero Bat Inn muy pronto with his handy Batman tool belt. Holy Hinge Repair!

Peace, Love, and Deferred Maintenance,

Jim

#2,022 in 2022

Mount Madonna County Park, Santa Clara County, California

 Waxing Crescent Moon

The first thing I noticed when I got out of the car yesterday at Mt. Madonna County Park was the stark, absolute silence. The absence of sound actually startled me. In an instant, I knew I was home.

Mt. Madonna is not a towering, sharp peak overlooking the surrounding countryside. It is more of a massive, rounded, tree-covered hulk. The high point (1,897 feet) is literally indistinguishable from the area around it, marked only by a modest, concrete, uninscribed monument in the woods. A USGS benchmark is its only embellishment. Mt. Madonna is both humble and great. You are welcome to sit for a minute on its simple throne and soak in the holy quiet.

My plan for this very warm, still, sort of buggy Thursday was a sweaty two-hour loop down the Merry-Go-Round Trail and back through the redwoods to the Henry Miller summer home ruins. Henry Miller was a big-time cattle baron in the 1800's. He built a handful of houses on the mountain, the largest of which cost a quarter of a million dollars in 1901. Ruins of this lavish vacation home still dot the area close to the "peak."

The connector to the Merry-go-Round Trail is all downhill, as are all the trails leaving from the high point, duh. I was greeted by a particularly interesting twisted tree limb right away.

Heading down on the Merry-Go-Round (part of the Bay Area Ridge Trail), I was soon out of the redwoods and into the oak, bay, and manzanita forest. It wasn't too long before the woods opened up to afford long views reaching over to the Diablo Range and down into the closer, adjacent Santa Cruz Mountains.

Relentless downhill walking gets to me these days, pounding my neck and knees, so I was glad to hang a right on the roller coaster Tie Camp Trail for a while. I would much rather hike up and down and around on switchbacks than struggle straight down on a fire road. My mood instantly improved as soon as I made the turn. There were tiny "little apple" berries on the manzanitas and a variety of wildflowers flanking the trail before it began to climb back up into the redwoods. 

After that, I hit my stride, huffing and puffing up the trail, gaining energy from the big trees. I stopped a couple of times to catch my breath and listen to the gentle hoots of a nearby owl. I don't know if it was saying hi or warning me or alerting his amigos to my presence, but I chose to enjoy the melodic echo of its call while it lasted. I made an attempt at an answering call, but it was decidedly un-owl-like. To be honest, it sounded like an old man gurgling in the woods. I wondered for a second if owls ever laugh.

There were intermittent segments of more oak and manzanita trees, too, as the trail made its way around the mountain, providing variety and beauty in their own way.

Soon I turned up the Ridge Trail, another wide fire road which led me (up, this time, which I prefer) to the Loop Trail past the archery range toward the Henry Miller house ruins. This was a good mile and a half of leg work and perspiration regaining the elevation I lost on the Merry-Go-Round Trail. It wasn't all that scenic, but I got to grind hard on this part and really feel the workout. Before too long, I was poking around in the ruins while eating a scrumptious PB & Banana sammie.

Long before there were vacation home-building cattle barons in the Americas, the Ohlone Amah Mutsun and other local tribelets frequented this mountain. I am willing to bet that there were many men, women, boys, and girls back then who could mimic an owl call way better than I can. I gotta work on that.

Peace, Love, and Having a Hoot,

Jim

#2,022 in 2022

Fort Ord National Monument, Monterey County, California

 Waxing Crescent Moon

I paid my second visit to Fort Ord National Monument yesterday to hike another small segment of its 86 miles of trails.  This time I parked at the Creekside Terrace Trailhead and tried my best to stay on single track trails rather than the wider dirt roads that follow the ridgelines. Some of the single tracks are multi-use (for horses, hikers, and mountain bikers) and some are for hikers only. They are clearly marked, so there shouldn't be any problems as long as people respect each other. I prefer trail walking over road walking, but many of the trails are short connector routes that intersect the long ridge roads. Most of the hikers I encountered were on the ridge routes yesterday. Maybe they feel safer there? 

I saw zero horses and only a few bikes, but there were plenty of walkers out on a sunny, warm, still day. The single tracks are lined with chaparral, with some of them shaded by gnarly old scrub oaks. I spied a few mountain quail and one chubby cottontail rabbit, but the main visible occupants were blue belly lizards, which were darting around all over the place, stopping occasionally to do a few pushups. Those critters are in shape!

Fort Ord was a U.S. Army facility from 1917 to 1994. Millions of soldiers were trained and were deployed from there from World War I through the Vietnam War. The base was decommissioned in 1991 and closed in 1994. Now the National Monument grounds cover 14,650 acres, under the joint auspices of the BLM and the U.S. Army. A little over half of that acreage is still off limits due to the presence of unexploded ordinance and other military contaminants. When remediation efforts are completed, the BLM (and the public) will acquire that land as well. We are very fortunate to have such a choice piece of property preserved for our use here on the $$$$ Central Coast.

On the east side of the park there are beautiful exposures of sandstone bluffs along Trail #30, which begins right at the parking area near a shaded picnic ramada. These bluffs are a fine example of badlands topography formed by differential erosion of the sandstone along the steep cliffs. You can walk right up to them in minutes on the sandy, clean tread. Happily, I only found one piece of trash on my two-hour loop walk - a broken piece of a plastic belt buckle. It is now on its way to the county landfill to sit there with the rest of the plastic junk for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

My imagination tells me that this park is only beginning to reach its potential as a recreation area and natural conservation/education site. My hope is that the damage from the war years can be fully remediated and the land can heal beneath the feet of happy, healthy visitors far into a peaceful future. I am looking forward to many more mornings of soaking in some rays and climbing the gentle, protected  hills so close to home.

Peace, Love, and Preservation,

Jim

#2,022 in 2022

Mileage Update  as of May 1: 667 out of 2,022

Debell Uvas Creek Park Preserve, Gilroy, California

 Waning Crescent Moon.

I really like municipal bike paths that wind along local rivers and creeks. I have visited hundreds of them all over the United States and without fail, they provide positive, natural opportunities for all kinds of citizens to recreate in safe, healthy environments. Yesterday I had a checkup with an ophthalmologist in Gilroy, about 15 miles from my camp. When it was over, I changed clothes and parked at the Gilroy Sports Park, which marks the southern end of the town's bike path that parallels Uvas Creek. Little League baseball is a very big deal here. The fields (three or four, I think) are immaculate, with great big scoreboards and grandstands. Very impressive.

The wide asphalt trail is paved with mile/km markers painted every quarter mile/km. There seemed to be an equal number of bicyclists and walkers on the trail during the two hours I was there. I walked to the three mile marker and turned around for a pleasant, six-mile stroll. It was breezy shorts-and-tee-shirt weather, an absolutely perfect day to be outside. After passing by the backside of Gilroy High School and some more sports parks, the trail enters the boundary of the Debell Uvas Creek Park Preserve, which appears to be a relatively new segment associated with the sprawling subdivisions along Santa Theresa Boulevard. There is still plenty of creek bed and floodplain area to offset the imposing houses and the coastal mountains in the background also provide welcome relief. The closer I got to the houses, the more developed the trail was, with playgrounds and informative posters and water fountains. I am sure the developers paid the city fees to cover at least part of these amenities. That is standard procedure in most places from what I understand. That practice allows residents from the whole town to benefit from growth. 

My favorite parts of the trail were the murals painted on underpasses that protect trail users from the busier streets. The best of these murals, in my opinion, is the one (painted by artist Sheryl Cather) that features animals and scenery that are reminiscent of the time before the modern settlements began. It may portray a romanticized paradise that is not entirely accurate, but it IS beautiful and it calls us to strive for responsible stewardship of the place we call home. Way to go, Sheryl Cather.

I really enjoyed my visit to this linear park along Uvas Creek and I could tell by the expressions on the faces of the people I met along the way that they did, too. Well done, Gilroy!

Peace, Love, and Universal Bike Paths,

Jim

#2,022 in 2022