castle rock
David & I went hiking today at Castle Rock State Park. The drive there was only about 35 minutes. We lucked out and were able to park on the side of the road outside the main entrance, so we didn't have to pay the \$6 parking fee. Originally, I was planning to hike a loop between the entrance, and the Trail Campground, but when we got out to the campground in less than 2 hours, I figured that we really needed to stretch things out a bit more so that we didn't get done so fast. So, we ended up taking the Saratoga Gap Trail all the way to the Trail Campground, then the Service Road Trail for less than a mile, to the Loghry Woods Trail. At that point, we just cut south along the side of CA-35 back to the parking area. The falls overlook was quite nice, even though there wasn't much water flowing. The views out over the valley west of the saratoga gap trail were also quite nice. What wasn't nice was the non-stop gunfire coming from the Las Gatos Shooting range, which occupies the northeast boundary of the park. I'm not sure if the shooting range was there before the park (and therefore grandfathered in), or what the backstory was, but it was just miserable listening to the soundtrack from a warzone as we hiked nearly 2 miles along the Loghry Woods Trail. Anyway, the weather was quite nice today, and overall we had a good time.