{"id":10,"date":"2004-10-11T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2004-10-11T13:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=10"},"modified":"2008-04-19T09:07:16","modified_gmt":"2008-04-19T17:07:16","slug":"a-sunday-at-grant-county-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2004\/10\/11\/a-sunday-at-grant-county-park\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sunday at Grant County Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

My reward for spending two chilly days at an outdoor music festival was seven days of sniffles and sneezing. The worst of it was over by Sunday so I went for a little 11-mile solo hike at Joseph D. Grant County Park, which is a few miles south of us, in the same mountain range. It has tons of trails, most of them going up and down hills. My favorite kind. <\/p>\n

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I walked about five miles in the rain at this park a few weekends back, so the blue skies were a welcome change. <\/p>\n

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Many hollow-tree-related sights await along the trail. This appears to be where the Keebler elves’ white-trash relatives were living till the landlord evicted them for selling hash brownies. <\/p>\n

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The punk-rock Keebler elves squatted here till they realized the extension cords for their amplifiers were too short. <\/p>\n

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I wonder how many bugs, grubs, worms and other low-food-chain creatures it took to eat all the bark off this old tree. <\/p>\n

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Think "I’m Still Standing," that annoying Elton John song. <\/p>\n

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I’m fascinated by these clumps of leaves and what (if anything) dwells within.<\/p>\n

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Last time I was up here, I rested my hat on this post before I noticed all the bird crap. Ick. <\/p>\n

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Antler Point, the highest point in the park, is atop this hill. <\/p>\n

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I spotted a coyote about a half-mile up the trail on the way to Antler Point. But no antlers. <\/p>\n

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Antler Point, which has a wonderful view of the valley when there’s no haze. Which is maybe three days a year. Elevation here is 2990 feet, making it my highest hike to date. <\/p>\n

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That’s the Mount Hamilton observatory, which has two giant telescopes at the top of the highest peak in the Bay Area. <\/p>\n

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Joseph Grant was a land baron who had a working cattle ranch on this land; his heirs donated the land to Santa Clara County, which created the park and named it after him. I imagine some of his hired hands put in a good day’s work putting up this fence, which could stand a visit from those Extreme Makeover Home Edition people. <\/p>\n

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A splash of fall color along the trail. <\/p>\n

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This is Grant Lake. Which should be titled Grant Pond. <\/p>\n

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Free parking near the trailhead!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My reward for spending two chilly days at an outdoor music festival was seven days of sniffles and sneezing. The worst of it was over by Sunday so I went for a little 11-mile solo hike at Joseph D. Grant…<\/p>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}