February 06, 2007
Mount Madonna County Park
Over the weekend Wookie and I went for a 5 mile hike at Mount Madonna County Park. It is on highway 152 between Gilroy and Watsonville and is part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was a fairly short drive to get there and the hike was good exercise because there was a lot of uphill hiking involved. We saw lots of redwoods and the ruins of a cattle baron's late 1800's/early 1900's summer home. It was very interesting to see how far a house could deteriorate in 100 years of no maintenance. :-) The ruins reminded me of buildings that were much older. Overall the hike was uneventful and there were no wildflowers out yet, so it was mostly checking out the redwoods and getting some exercise. There were a lot of trail junctions and without a map and compass I might have ended up like the couple that got lost at Castle Rock State Park a few months ago. If I had gotten to a point where I didn't know which turn to take I might have had to GO BACK THE WAY I CAME. But since I know how to use a map and compass (gps doesn't do much good in dense forest) I was good to go. After the hike I got the crazy idea of going into Watsonville and finding an authentic (no English spoken) taqueria. My hypothesis was that the worse the spoken English was the better the food would be. I found a place called Trejos Carnitas, which as you would expect specialized in carnitas. And as I generally do when I go to a new taqueria I got a carnitas burrito (common denominator). The only problem here was that my Spanish is not very good and the lady that took my order spoke no English (a very good indicator of authenticity). But luckily it is not too hard to order a carnitas burrito and a coca cola. I would have had a hard time ordering a double decaf half caf with a twist of lemon. They brought the burrito out to me along with lime, homemade hot sauce, and whole hot peppers to add to it. The food was fantastic and I didn't hear a word of English my whole time there Hypothesis correct!