Down to San Jose

So, Tuesday I wound up in San Jose, and stayed with my mum.  I was quite tired that day, and headed in for an early night.  The following day, though, I explored the neighbourhood.  Now, I’d grown up in this neighbourhood, and I even owned a bicycle when I lived there, but I don’t really remember doing much riding.  So, off I went.  There have been a lot of bicycle paths and trails added since I left almost 30 years ago, and my first exploration spot was a place where I’d spent many a summer day as a child–Lake Vasona.

There’s a bicycle path which runs approximately 12 miles, from the lake to an old high school, running along side the Los Gatos Creek the entire way.  Strangely, I saw no interesting birds or mammals, and I was rather disappointed.  I had hoped that there would at least be egrets along the creek.  Oh well…nevertheless, I got some nice photos:

 
Some California poppies and lupins–a childhood favourite!

Lovely new leaves of California Live Oak.

The first year we lived in San Jose, I thought I had died and gone to heaven…because it rained all the time!  I remember the passenger deck of this bridge being UNDERWATER due to the flooding that occured.

I did see some birds–the fields at the lake were covered with Coots!

I turned around at the far end of the trail and headed back. The opposite end of the trail took me into the town of Los Gatos, a place very fondly remembered by me. Not so fondly remembered by the other members of my family is this plant:

This innocent looking plant is Poison Oak, which causes contact blisters on those who are susceptible to it. I was fortunate in that I never reacted to it.

This is Miner’s lettuce. Apparently edible, although I never tried it.
I headed over to the Los Gatos Library last. Many, many happy days were spent here in this library. There were even copies of Punch to be found here! It also had an unusual oak in the parking lot–Quercus suber, the Cork Oak.

The rest of the day consisted of simply riding around my old neighbourhood, looking at the changes that had occurred over the last few decades.