Black Friday

Friday 29th November

Today is the day that Americans head to the shops for I suppose the equivalent of New Year's Day Sales in England.  Having watched the news the night before and seen the gun fights and other violence that flares up over parking spaces, queue jumping and that extra special bargain.......we decided to steer very clear.

Instead we headed over to the northern end of Almaden Quicksilver County park for a leisurely stroll.  We have hit a spell of exceptionally nice weather for our last few days in California so even though it's less than a month until Christmas it was still comfortable to be walking in t shirts and shorts.  If anything it's even nicer now because the trees have their lovely autumn colours which look spectacular against the blue skies and in the golden sunshine.

Martin was suffering from a slight injury, his toe had been in an altercation with a rock at the beach on Tuesday so he was finding walking a little painful.  I was still feeling stuffed up and peaky with the virus which will not go away and we were both feeling a bit lazy after a very long day yesterday so we took it fairly easy. We enjoyed exploring this end of the park, which we had not been to beforehand but were surprised and a little disappointed that there were so many other people with the same idea. We had assumed that they would all be murdering each other at the mall but apparently not.......

After a couple of miles we found the perfect place to stop and put up the slack line - a picnic bench just off the path beside a shaded stream.  We had been there for about half an hour enjoying the peace and tranquility when a really annoying American family descended on us, sat down at the picnic table despite the fact that we had our stuff on it and I was actually sitting at one end and carried on a loud conversation with their two irritating little girls who were jumping around in the stream.  Then another three people showed up and joined them.....We took one look at each other, stuffed the slack line back in the ruck sack and exited stage left as quickly as possible.

A little further up this lovely wooded valley we came to the Guadalupe reservoir which is looking very sad with extremely low water levels. We continued along the Guadalupe Trail until it joined the Mine Hill Trail just short of where we had run the previous weekend and then looped back on ourselves until we reached the trail head and retraced our steps to the car.  This was our third and last visit to this lovely park for this trip and it remains my favourite place in the San Jose area. I'm already looking forward to returning next visit.

An exciting drive followed - only 17 miles worth of petrol left in the car apparently - but we made it to a gas station.  I guess if we had run out at least we still had the bikes in the back.........Next stop the Almaden Whole Foods for one last visit to the salad bar and then off to the Almaden Lake park for a picnic and more slack lining.  The first place we set up was not good so we walked around the very lovely lake and found absolutely the best place on the far side of the park.  I have found the last few sessions very frustrating and was losing my enthusiasm....but this time I suddenly got my balance back and it was much better.  It's one of those totally pointless things that you just have to keep doing and the parks in California are brilliant because they're so large, there are so many trees and nobody takes any notice. I can't imagine, for example, setting it up in the Borough Gardens in Dorchester......

We completed our circuit of the lake to get back to the car and both agreed that this is our favourite "town" park, definitely nicer than Hellyer although it is a bit further away from Erica Court.  I decided that I needed some more driving practice after a couple of days off and bravely took the wheel to negotiate the Saturday traffic and two freeways........I still find some of the junctions rather mystifying but I'm much more confident now.  It doesn't help when I ask for directions and the navigator says things like "keep straight here....or you could turn right if you want to......."

Back at Erica Court we caught up with Sherry and Rich who were debating what we should do with our evening and what/where to eat. Fortunately the final decision was to stay in and eat Thanksgiving left overs, not only because they were delicious but also because we really just wanted to relax and get an early night. It's so tiring being on holiday.......