(Santa Clara County)
Well, SanFrancisco CitySearch has a great section on hikes in the bay area. You should definitely check it out if you want to know the best places to go hike. Naoto and I have gone on a few of them and they are never dissappointing. However, in March of 2000 we drove to Uvas Canyon Regional Park and had an amazing hike to four different waterfalls all within a mile or two of each other.
First
of all, getting to Uvas Canyon was very strange. It is totally off the beaten
track. You also have to drive on this strange, one lane road through the Swedish-American
Patriotic League's resort. (Naoto asked me to which country they were patriotic
and I couldn't tell him) to get to this park.
Then you pull into this huge parking lot area and start looking around for signs for the trailhead. We finally found Triple Falls trailhead and walked uphill for a quite a long ways. There were absolutely gorgeous views of the Santa Clara mountains on that sunny day in March. We didn't meet very many people on that trail, I got the feeling that most people just went to see the other three falls in the park.
Finally we started going down hill through some brush and found....two pipes with water coming out!!! Both Naoto and I were very dissappointed until we realized that it WAS NOT Triple Falls. We started climbing up a steep, slippery path strewn with dead leaves and came upon this:
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Oh yes, it was gorgeous. But little did we know that it was only the beginning. I recently took a test in Harper's magazine that is supposed to tell you if you have alien genetics in you. One of the questions is "Do you become mysteriously excited around flowing water?". If you answer "yes" that is supposed to indicate alien genes. I guess I'm an alien because I didn't mind climbing back up the hill to get to the loop path to see the other tree falls! Oh yeah, we also found this cool stump.
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So then we started running into more and more hikers. We also started getting deeper in to the forest and a slightly slimier path. After somemore downhill-uphill trekking, we came upon two more falls: Black Rock and Basin Falls. Both were nothing to shake a feather at. Basin Falls was my favorite, I climbed up on the slippery rocks and got my pants and shoes wet. (Actually, Naoto would tell you that I tried to jump over a stream and fell in and that's why my shoes were wet, but I'm not going to say anything about my clumsiness) Standing there, next to the falls with the spray falling on my cheeks and the energy of the rushing water filling my lungs, I wondered how I could live my life without this feeling every day! (Do you think Naoto would mind a two hour commute through Swedith-American Patriotic League lands?)
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On our way back to the parking lot a nice man
with three children came up to us and told us about the annual migration fo
the ladybugs. Evidently they like to spend winter in Santa Clara, California.
Who'd have thought that ladybugs migrated? Anyway, we found some.
Of course Naoto and I were so famished from our trek we had to stop for sustanance on the way home. I think it was a total coincidence that my favorite Japanese noodle/gyoza restaurant was on the way home. We ate about 16 gyoza!
Click here to go back to Kirsten and Naoto's main home page.
Click here if you are interested in our February 2000 Trip to Japan.
Oh yeah, and click here if you are interested in Kirsten's published fiction short stories.