April 9, 2006 Sunday Day 8

Sunny morning, overcast all day, rain in the later afternoon
Temperatures 65 to 75.
Walked 5.25 miles, drove 20 miles

Today we drove first thing down to the city center, parked in front of the library and took the VTA light rail back to the station where we ended yesterday's walk. We started our walk along Brokaw road towards the airport. Walking by the landscaped sidewalks of another business park, I asked Donna what would Muir would have thought of all the flowerscapes we were seeing. She said Muir did not like ornamental gardens, but I think he would say looking at any kind of landscaping is better than looking at paving.

It wasn't long before we got to the Guadalupe River trail. It ran between the river and the airport road, and was almost a paved road. It was noisy because of the nearby traffic, but because it has the tree lined river on one side it was much nicer than Brokaw, or walking through the business parks. After a mile or two the trail left the busy road and became much more pleasant. It was well used by the local residents, dog walkers and bikers, and also by airplanes, as the airport uses the Guadalupe River for its flight path, and we had to plug our ears pretty often to block the noise as planes took off over us.

The trail is not complete and it alternates which side of the river it is on. At one point the way was unclear we saw someone walking ahead of us going around a fence and we followed them along a small trail through deep and lush weeds (mostly radish and mustard, but there was a purple arroyo lupine standing tall in the midst the tall exotics). It was clearly not the main trail: we ended up to our necks in weeds and were sure Muir would have loved it. We loved it too, because it was the first time on the trip that we walked through any place quite so wild. We came up with Muir Axiom number one: Trails are much nicer when they are near nature: the more nature, the nicer the trail.

We got back to the library just in time for our presentation where we showed our maps and told what we had found so far. It was great fun and one couple invited us to breakfast tomorrow saying they would also shuttle us down the road. We ended the day by driving to Donna's aunt and uncle's house to spend the night.