I’m going to be travelling for the next three weeks, and so yesterday was filled with packing, shopping, and taking care of a bunch of stuff. With that completed, today was declared a field trip. Usually that involves heading to the ocean, but for a change we drove inland, to the Joseph D. Grant Park in the mountains behind San Jose. Our optimistic objective was to get all the way to the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, but we were flexible.
Google Maps suggested that the best way to get to the park was to go down 101 to Tully Road, and then go east on Quimby Road. Quimby is an amazing drive. I had to concentrate on my driving, but as we climbed out of San Jose I could hear Kate saying “Wow!” as the panorama of Silicon Valley unfolded. (Later exclamations were mostly in reference to the width of the road and the tightness of the hairpin bends.)
We set off on a trail that looped down the valley and back, about two miles. Almost immediately, we saw some kind of creature on the meadows above us. The unaided eye couldn’t identify it, but maximum zoom on my Nikon P90 pulled it in: a wild turkey:

More pictures from the trail:

After completing the trail, we decided to follow CA-130 towards the Lick Observatory. I was under the illusion that because it was a numbered state highway, it was going to be wider and faster than Quimby Road, but after a few miles I realized my mistake. There was another complication: traffic. There were very few cars, but many cyclists and motor-cyclists. Going downhill was no problem – in fact the cyclists went faster than I did – but uphill was a different story. Eventually we turned a corner and got our first sight of the observatory, several thousand feet above us. There was a trail-head car park on the left, and we decided to stop and have lunch.
Here are the photos that I took of the Lick Observatory, at 1x and 24x zoom:

After lunch, we decided to abandon the Lick and head home. The Prius likes this kind of downhill run: I don’t think the main engine came on the whole way down….