On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
way2blue
My town backs up against the Santa Cruz Mountains which are crisscrossed with trails. When the San Francisco Bay Area restricted travel last March, people turned to the outdoors. One favorite trail is up to the top of Windy Hill, a grass-covered ridge bracketed by tree-covered slopes.
The seasonal frog pond behind the elementary school at dusk. (I used to collect the tiny green frogs at lunch time and stuff them in my milk carton to take home… I was seven.) A fence now separates school kids from the pond. Windy Hill is behind the tree on the left.
A warning about mountain lions at the entrance to the open space. My nephew saw a collared one walk through his parent’s backyard last week. Lots of deer in the neighborhood to harvest. Not to mention pets…
Roundtrip from our house (down in the trees) is about 6.5 miles. This photo is looking eastward to San Francisco Bay & the east bay hills beyond. Hoover Tower, on the Stanford campus, is in the center; the (radar) Dish on the grassy ridge to its right.
View to the west. The Pacific Ocean is hidden beneath the fog bank.
Another westward view, this one from a friend’s land further north along Skyline Ridge. Pacific Ocean in the distance.
On my way back down the Windy Hill trail, I came upon rattlesnakes. Apparently making whoopee and oblivious to me—although I did give them wide berth…
Astonished by how symmetrical their ‘dance’ was…
Reminding me of the caduceus symbol from Greek mythology, the staff Hermes carries…
p.a.
Wow! Where do rattlesnakes make whoopee? Wherever the frak they want to!
S Riches
Thank-you for the photos+++++++++++++
The cat stepped on my keyboard. Santa Cruz has an amazing color of green.
Barbara
I heard a rattlesnake once and it was unforgettable, so I am very impressed you stuck around to take pictures. Really nice pics!
JPL
@p.a.: Next time, way2blue might meet up with the babies. How sweet!
Albatrossity
Great shots of the mating rattlesnakes! That is quite a sight to see.
And thanks for the memory jog. I spent 5 years in the area during grad school, and I loved the mountains and ridges just west of the Stanford campus. We used to take some of those windy roads on the way to Bean Hollow or San Gregorio beach, and would stop for burgers at the Alpine Inn. Is that place still there?
HinTN
@Albatrossity: You weren’t hanging around with Kesey and the Pranksters were you?
Laura Too
Cool snakes, how lucky! Thanks for sharing!
arrieve
I grew up in the Bay Area and love that landscape.. Those banks of fog sitting out on the Pacific especially. I used to listen to the foghorns lying in bed at night. Thanks for sharing!
SiubhanDuinne
Your “back yard” is lovely.
And the sneks are very cool.
way2blue
@Albatrossity: Yes. Alpine Inn (aka Rossitti’s) is still here. The matriarch died a few years back and a group of locals bought it to keep it from being ‘gentrified’. Although they needed to bring the inside up to code and definitely improved the beer garden out back with new tables & umbrellas. Plus a pizza oven. It’s now packed all the time, so no longer just a locals dive…
way2blue
@JPL: Actually. I hiked up Windy Hill on Wednesday and saw a baby rattler with its baby rattle. Fortunately, it was in a hurry to get off the trail into the grass…
surfk9
I was a baker at Stanford for five years in the eighties. I went to work at 5:30am. My favorite view was early morning getting off the 280 at Page Mill Road, the view of the Bay was spectacular. I would stop and just take in the view frequently.
I used to eat lunch at the Alpine Inn with a co-worker. The burgers were great and the beer was cold.
Origuy
@Albatrossity: The Alpine Inn, formerly Rossotti’s, and still known to everyone as Zot’s, is still there. They apparently did a renovation during the pandemic, but I haven’t been back since. They probably did ok once they reopened, since most of their seating is outside. Last time I was there, they had made significant improvements to the food. I think we should have a BJ meetup there.
https://www.alpineinnpv.com
J R in WV
Many years ago we drove down into New River Gorge, long before the National River stuff, on an abandoned narrow gauge RR grade from Babcock State Park up on the canyon rim. At the end of the day swimming and fishing, when we got back to the LandCruiser, wife walked around the back of the little truck and stopped, said there’s a snake.
I said, well just back away real slow and smooth, and she did. It was a huge rattlesnake almost certainly a timber rattler, as big around as my arm, maybe 6 or 7 feet long, all coiled up below the passenger side door. So she got in on the driver’s side, I carefully backed away without mashing Mr Snek and we drove back up the RR grade out of the gorge.
Biggest rattler I have ever seen, even in zoos. We have lots of big black snakes around the farm, they keep the copperheads down, will predate on the smaller snakes, and out compete them for snake-types foods like rodents and such. We just don’t see copperheads any more around the farm. I used to collect black snakes and bring them home, distorting their balance…
ETA:
Thanks for the pictures, esp of the two snakes together, very unusual to see I’m sure. Beautiful country for sure~!~
The Moar You Know
I lived in Santa Cruz for seven years. A rather large part of me regrets ever having left.
Sister Golden Bear
Looks like we’re neighbors. I’m down for a jackal meet-up at Zot’s.
dfh
@Albatrossity:
I visited San Gregorio Beach in July 2007 with my sister who was at a linguistics conference at Stanford. We hiked beautiful trails and walked the sand and saw an old bobcat on one trail leading from the beach to the trees. He stared at me like he didn’t have the time to mess with me. Crusty old bobcat.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
OK, you’ve made me officially homesick for where I grew up (sigh). Thanks for the great pictures of the views. How cool you saw the rattlers making whoopee.
Comrade Colette
@Sister Golden Bear: Me, too!
Famille Colette has hiked Windy Hill and environs many times – great place, appropriately named.
Jess
@Albatrossity: The Alpine Inn is still there in all its funky glory! At least it was three years ago. I took many pictures there.
Watergirl, I envy you! Santa Cruz and its environs are one of my favorite places in the world. I never lived there, but spend a big chunk of my life in the Bay Area, and another in Santa Barbara (grad school). My sister lived in SC for a number of years, as did a close friend. My friend lives in Palo Alto now, and whenever I visit we head down to SC for fun.
I hate how crowded and developed the area, and California as a whole, has become though. I moved to Massachusetts 14 years ago and don’t regret it. But I do miss CA at times, for its weather and sheer beauty. At least I get to visit from time to time.
joel hanes
@dfh:
The general store in San Gregorio is one of my favorite NorCal places, along with Aldo’s on the Santa Cruz harbor for breakfast, and Duarte’s in Pescadero (get the soup, half cream of artichoke and half cream of jalapeno).
Used to enjoy the beachhouse restaurant at Gazos Creek, but every time I go there it seems to have changed hands, so I have no idea what’s there now.
Glad to hear Zot’s is still in business. The Oasis closed in 2018, and that was a blow, but Alice’s Restaurant on Skyline is still truckin’
El Cruzado
Had driven through a number of times since I moved to the Bay Area but it took the pandemic to really start hiking those trails. I still prefer hiking on the other side of the ridge but have come to love the embarrassment of hiking riches around.
Only encountered one rattlesnake so far, heard didn’t see. Gave it all the personal space it wanted.
Albatrossity
@Origuy:
I suspect that there are a lot of jackals in that end of the Bay area; a meetup at Zot’s would probably draw a crowd. Alas, I have only been back there a few times since grad school, and everything is very different each time.
@joel hanes: Yeahs, the closing of the Oasis was sad news. Spent too many h0urs there drinking beer, eating peanuts, and planing experiments for the next day in the lab!
Albatrossity
way2blue
@surfk9: Ha. I was in grad school at Stanford in the 80s. Perhaps we crossed paths…
way2blue
@J R in WV: Yikes. I’ve had rattlesnakes ‘rattle’ at me twice. Once in the Wasatch Mts of Utah; once on the Hearst Ranch near San Simeon. It’s a sound you don’t forget…
way2blue
@joel hanes: Yeah. The old Italian families that owned a lot of these iconic ‘pubs’ have passed on , and their children don’t want the hassle. (Beltramo’s is gone too.)
way2blue
@El Cruzado: Adjacent to La Honda, there’s a great hike that I did for the first time last October—on the old Sears Ranch now part of the open space. If you walk far enough in (~4.5 miles), you’ll be rewarded with a view of the Pacific Ocean. We passed maybe three people on a Saturday, whereas the parking lots for Windy Hill were overflowing…
way2blue
@Sister Golden Bear: A jackal meet-up at Rossitti’s sounds great. Would need to pick a time when it’s not absolutely jammed. Mid afternoon perhaps… The inside is still closed, but the outside tables along the creek are spaced out and they have QR menu ordering (may change when things ‘open up’ in mid June).
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Was hiking around in the scrub off 395 just north of Bishop about 55 yrs ago and nature called and was not to be ignored. Dropped trou and just as I was about to…… I heard a large rattler not far behind me. I seem to recall that the urge was completely gone almost instantaneously. Never saw the rattler but that noise is unmistakable.