{"id":1423,"date":"2007-08-13T10:35:48","date_gmt":"2007-08-13T15:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=1423"},"modified":"2008-02-13T08:31:31","modified_gmt":"2008-02-13T16:31:31","slug":"ponderosa-trail-at-henry-coe-state-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2007\/08\/13\/ponderosa-trail-at-henry-coe-state-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Ponderosa Trail at Henry Coe State Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, the forecast for Gilroy predicted a high of only 82, which struck me as an engraved invitation to stop in on Henry Coe State Park on the rare sub-100 day in August.
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Naturally, it was at least 10 degrees hotter in the park, which gave me a perfect excuse to look for easy, shady miles and leave the leg-burners till winter and spring. One terrific find: the Ponderosa Trail, a spur from the trail that goes up to the Coe Memorial. It’s about nine-tenths of a mile, an easy loop once you make the 400-foot climb up from Coe HQ. It goes through a stand of Ponderosa pines and feels almost like hiking in the Sierra except for the lack of craggy peaks nearby.
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<\/p>\n

\"Green<\/a><\/p>\n

The green and gold are a gorgeous combination this time of year, before the yellow turns to brown in September and October.<\/p>\n


\n\"A<\/a>
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There is one nice dead tree.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a><\/p>\n

And a nice live one nearby.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Ponderosa<\/a><\/p>\n

The ponderosa is a stately tree, to be sure.
\n

<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a><\/p>\n

On a clear day the the loop offers eye-popping views.<\/p>\n


\n\"Lonesome<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s even this lonesome picnic table to pause and soak it all in.<\/p>\n

The rest of my pictures seemed unremarkable — mostly snags we’ve seen a dozen times before.
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From the Coe Memorial I went down to Frog Lake, where I heard a distinct knocking sound on one of the large dead trees coming up out of the pond. Sure enough, there was a woodpecker pounding away. I’ve heard them before but it was the first time I’d actually seen a woodpecker at work. There’s a little path around the pond that’s worth checking out.
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From there it was up to Middle Ridge Trail and back to the HQ via the Fish & Corral trails. This really is one of the better moderate hikes at Coe: almost all on single-tracks that take you through pretty much all the park has to offer, terrainwise, without infarction-inducing climbs up all those old gravel roads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Sunday, the forecast for Gilroy predicted a high of only 82, which struck me as an engraved invitation to stop in on Henry Coe State Park on the rare sub-100 day in August. Naturally, it was at least 10…<\/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":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423"}],"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=1423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}