Youngmeeism: Hiking No. 7 Lucky Hiking Day in Castle Rock State Park

Hiking No. 7 on Nov 9, 2013

Right before our hike, we had to drop by Target since today was the last day to trade-in old iPads for gift cards worth $200. When we got there, the line looked pretty short and we thought it would be a quick in and out. Just as we were positioning ourselves into the waiting line, the guy a few people ahead of us informed us that he was told he was the last person to secure the limited number of remaining gift cards and many people who had been waiting in line in the morning all left. Mike immediately started calling around other stores for the availability while still waiting in line and found that two stores with some cards left are the ones in Fremont and Los Banos -- way too far for us to drive. So, we decided to stick around to see if we would get lucky. It turns out that we were the last people to trade-in our iPad. Today happens to be our hiking day number 7 in succession. Indeed our LUCKY day! :D

To make up for the lost time at Target, we switched our hiking destination from Henry Cowell State Park to Castle Rock State Park. This is a popular place for hiking, rock climbing and bouldering. The trail we took -- the Ridge Trail and the Saratoga Gap Trail -- has a good mix of exposed areas with panoramic views of the valleys and shady areas of dense forest in addition to cool, swiss cheese-looking rocks made of sandstones. It was also interesting to see several rock climbers in action near the Waterfall and the Goat Rock. The one downside was that the trail was quite crowded with hikers.

Our day ended with having the first dinner at Thai Spice in Los Gatos downtown. We had grilled calamari, Thai basil style seafood and green curry with tofu and vegetables. Though, we liked the seafood, the other dishes including the brown rice were just mediocre. We also had mixed feelings about the waiting staff -- the busboy was fantastic, obsessively refilling our water glasses, two serving ladies were very kind, but one skinny tall lady was quite scary and aggressive...