Here's two weeks into one.
Saturday last week found us very tired after a late night party the day before. Aditya's friend and his family came over for a dinner party. After hours of Kinect and Wii that lasted well into midnight, none of us had the energy to drive an hour to the more picturesque hikes. As a compromise, we took a long 2.5 hr walk in the Shore line park.
http://bahiker.com/southbayhikes/shoreline.html
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| Birds of Shoreline - Charleston Slough |
As a shout-out to anna, this is one of the great bird watching options in the Bay area. We saw some egrets, humming birds, geese, sparrows, cormorants, pelicans and gulls. You can find some pics here.
http://blog.adampaul.com/2007/10/09/charleston-slough-and-shoreline-park-birding/
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| Bayshore |
We also climbed down close to the shores of the bay and found some barnacles and barnacle fossils.
The shoreline trail is along the flight path for the private plans that land as Palo Alto airport, so we were able to watch many planes take off and land.
And of course, a hike is incomplete unless followed by a hearty lunch, so we stopped at Passage to India for a buffet lunch. They have THE MOST AWESOME gulab jamoons. There can be no other glowing testimonial for their gulab jamoon beyond Aditya eating a second helping for a total of 4 jamoons.
The week before last saturday, we hiked the Fremont Older Preserve in Cupertino.
http://bahiker.com/southbayhikes/fremontolder.html
Instead of taking the 2.7 mile hike recommended by the BaHiker, we followed the more strenuous 3.7 mile hike suggested in
Afoot & Afield in the Bay Area. This is a mostly exposed trail, and definitely not a good one for a hot summer morning. However, we had an unseasonally cold and cloudy day with some showers that Saturday, so we did not get baked by the sun. This was the first hike of "moderate" difficulty that we took Aditya on and he handled it well.
This is a shared trail and we saw many equestrians and dog-walkers using the trails. I was surprised to learn that while dog-walkers are expected to clean up after their pets, the same regulation does not apply to horseback riders. So we came across quite a few lumps of horse manure that marred our experience a little bit.
During this hike, we saw grape vines from a nearby winery and a spectacular field full of yellow wildflowers that looked just like the field of yellow mustard in the famous DDLJ song.
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| Fremont Older Preserve - A collage |
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| Buckwheat Pancakes |
We wrapped it up by going back to Bill's Cafe for lunch, with Croissant French Toast and Buckwheat Pancakes.
