Stile Ranch Trail in Santa Teresa County Park, San Jose

With the sun shining, a nice breeze drifting through the air, and temperatures hanging in the mid-70’s today, I knew it was a perfect day for a weekend afternoon hike.

I felt like doing a hike I’d never done before, so my little family and I headed to a park in San Jose called Santa Teresa County Park for the first time. We chose Stile Ranch Trail, which was described by other hikers on the Web as a moderate 1-3 hour hike. The park is located in pretty countryside.

One thing I really like about hiking in the South Bay area is that it is never really crowded anywhere that I’ve been thus far. In San Diego, if you go for a hike on the weekend, sometimes you’re practically being herded up the mountain with a crowd full of people. Here, that’s not the case. We saw just a few mountain bikers during our hike, and were able to let Harley free off of the leash.

The hike had a moderate, steady incline at the beginning, and then got easier as we progressed. It wound up taking us a few minutes over an hour, and that’s with stopping a couple times to play around on rocks and trees (obviously!).

I even got to practice trying a few yoga poses while balancing on rocks.

Warrior III pose with a ray of light shooting through my foot. 🙂

It was a nice short weekend hike, and I’d definitely like to go back to somewhere else in the almost 1,700-acre park to do a more challenging hike sometime!

Afterwards we stopped at the pet store for some food and goodies for the pup, where I was practically crying from laughing so hard at this:

I can’t even deal with Harley Claus.

I’m off to get working on a new recipe creation for dinner. Hope that you enjoy the rest of your weekend!