A day in the Foothills

Cooked myself a nice pre-marinated juicy steak from JJ&F's at Foothills Park for a barbecue organized by Joe and Angela. After leaving there I decided I needed to do some exploring, so I headed up Page Mill Road a little ways to Foothills Open Space Preserve. Lucky for me there was one parking spot left of the two designated for this small preserve. Coincidentally, I happen to have my GPS and knew of two geocaches in this preserve. The half-mile trail leading to the grassy knoll was easy enough, as was the first cache.



The rest of the trail leading to the second cache was, shall we say, not currently maintained. It was obviously a well used trail at some point in time, judging by the well worn rut, but the dense brush and trees that had since grown over it made for an interesting hike/crawl. My GPS batteries gave out while crawling through an overgrown tree about 500 feet from the second cache. By this point I felt committed to finding it, or rather I wanted something to show for all my scratches and scrapes. I figured I could roughly gauge the distance on the trail and that with the dense foliage it couldn't be that far off the trail, if there was a trail left by then. Thankfully right about the time I was ready to turn around, or try bushwhacking a new route back, I found it. I opted for the known route back and found it fairly uneventful, except for the baby rattlesnake I nearly stepped on.