On Sunday, Cody and I ventured down to Gilroy, California, to visit their outlet mall in hopes of buying him some jeans and myself some sandals and to go for a hike. We had camped in Gilroy when we first moved to the area, and we were excited to return for a day of shopping and hiking. Unfortunately, we mostly struck out on both plans. The outlet mall was packed and miserable. I picked up a pair of sunglasses, but nothing else.
Afterwards we went to go hiking, and the trail we found was awful. It was a 2 mile, paved, flat trail in the middle of a field. The dogs even hated the idea of it, and Barley tried to hide under a park bench. Definitely not what we were expecting based on our previous camping experience here. When we saw how miserable the trail was, we tried to change plans and hike the Harvey Bear trail instead, but when we got to the trail head it was closed due to “unsafe conditions.” Bummer. We sucked it up and did the quick 2 mile loop at Martin Murphy trying to focus on the positives: sun tanning, beautiful views of more desirable mountains we could have been hiking, and the fact that at least it was better than the outlet mall.
I haven’t given up on the area yet, and maybe next time we can try a couple other trails in the area, but let’s just say this is Strike 1 for the Coyote Lake-Harvey Bear Ranch County Park area.
Score: 2/10
The Teaching Nomad 