If you ever poke around googling local restaurants or stores you might find reviews at yelp.com. The other day I was looking for something else at the site and absent-mindedly typed in “hiking” in Yelp’s search field and discovered there are hundreds of quickie reviews of local parks. Individual reviews are, of course, rarely up to our demanding standards, but you can still garner a few good tips. I searched on hiking and “San Jose” and got 187 hits. I liked this one from Big Basin:

It gets HOT here in the summer. We did this beautiful hike on a hungover 5th of July, and the heat was a little much in that condition… just a warning. The waterfall loop hike is a bit long but it’s gorgeous… you get to see 3 waterfalls in 11 miles I think it was. Giant redwoods everywhere, and nice cool foliage to cool you down a bit if you’re in some kind of day after bad shape like we were. As usual, can’t wait to come check out the camping here.

Actually Big Basin’s much cooler than the valley in the summer, but hey, slack is always cut for the hung-over. (What can I say, it’s in my Irish genes).