Last year I had hiked in the rain a half-dozen times by this late in October, but it’s nothing but sunshine around here this fall. The last time I hiked through the Sunol Wilderness, my camera died on me, so…
Trails
Me vs. the volcano
by tmangan • September 3, 2005 • 0 Comments
Rule No. 1 for hiking up hills might well be: If you can hear your heartbeat, it’s time to slow down. When I do training hikes, huffing it up steep trails, I know I’m not really pushing myself until my…
Too hot, too hilly: A day at Henry Coe
by tmangan • August 29, 2005 • 0 Comments
If you read up on Henry Coe State Park, the first things you’ll learn are a) the hills are hell; and b) hiking there in late summer is madness. I was one of a few brave fools to hit the…
Getting sweaty at Sunol
by tmangan • August 22, 2005 • 7 Comments
A year ago last weekend I visited the Sunol Wilderness Regional Park for the first time. Since then I’ve been back to the park at least a half-dozen times. Sunol has just about everything you’d want in a park —…
Hot day at Angel Island
by tmangan • July 26, 2005 • 0 Comments
Operative adjective of the past few days has been "scalding." Well, scalding by our standards. It’s not like the brutal 95/95 (degrees/humidity) that we’ve known in Tampa or the insufferable 103/92 we’ve known in Peoria, but even when there are…
Touched by an Angel
by tmangan • June 5, 2005 • 1 Comment
Angel Island is this hunk of rock poking up out of the middle of San Francisco Bay. The island’s a state park now, but over the years it’s been home to an anti-aircraft missile base, a prisoner of war camp…
Among the giant trees
by tmangan • May 22, 2005 • 0 Comments
Big Basin Redwoods State Park is one of those places where you walk into the woods thinking of trees as expendable implements of human intent like any right-thinking Republican but you walk out of the woods a confirmed tree-hugger. The…
A-camping we have gone
by tmangan • May 2, 2005 • 1 Comment
The storyline could’ve been "city slickers go camping, hilarity ensues," but there are no disasters to report — primarily because Melissa had our camp-out worked out to the tiniest detail. If an earthquake had ravaged the region, we’d have been…
Good day at Alum Rock
by tmangan • April 18, 2005 • 0 Comments
I’m on vacation for the next two weeks, so the first order of business on Day One had to be a hike. I chose Alum Rock Park, which is run by the city of San Jose. It used to be…