Tourists In Our Own Town, Pt. 2

It's been a long while since my last tourists in our own town post, and to be honest I've been working on this one since September. But then Halloween took over, and we all know Halloween is a month, not just a day, so this got pushed to the back burner and I've just been adding and adding to it, so I figured I'd better just publish it now before it turns into a 3,000 photo monster of a post.

For those of you who don't know, we've lived in San Jose for a little over a year and we're still finding new to us places to explore. Technically one of these places isn't in San Jose, but it's within a 40 minute drive, so fairly local. 

First up, the rose garden. We've visited here before, but this is the first time since Declan could walk, and boy was it a different experience. Suddenly it occurred to me that roses have thorns. Who knew? And thorns with a wobbly toddler is a whole lot less peaceful than thorns with a baby strapped to your chest. Still, the boys had a great time running up and down the rows and we enjoyed a lovely day without anyone tumbling into a rose bush.

Right across the street from the Target that we visit every single week is this amazing Rotary Playgarden that we somehow never noticed for a full year. It's got rock walls, giant stone slides, a trampoline, cool spinning climbing structures, and, best of all, it's in the airplanes landing route, so there are planes flying overhead the whole time. If that's not toddler paradise, I don't know what is. 

One weekend without much on the agenda we decided to hike in a new to us spot called Sunol Ohlone Park. Apparently you can hike all the way to a magical sounding place called Little Yosemite, but we wouldn't know because we didn't make it that far. We forgot to bring Declan's hiking backpack so that means he had to walk or we had to carry him. Uphill. Like, really, really steep hills. All things considered we made it pretty far and we saw some great views, but we turned around about halfway and decided we'd try again later when we're better prepared.

And there you have it! Any other bay area locals with some good hiking spot or kid friendly recommendations?