Customer Reviews

Best Easy Day Hikes San Jose (Best Easy Day Hikes Series)

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Tracy Salcedo Chourre is one of my favorite Falcon authors. She started writing guidebooks to the Colorado Mountains, but her passion remains California and nowhere is this more apparent than when she writes about the Bay Area where she grew up. Now raising her family in Marin, she has written extensive guidebooks to Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Point Reyes National Seashore, and produced several contributions to the Best Easy Day Hikes series. This guide, to hikes around San Jose, completes her Bay Area series that includes the San Francisco peninsula, North Bay, and East Bay trail books. All are worth while, but this one is missing a couple trails that I think must be included in a book like this one.

Like all the other books in the Best Easy Day Hikes series, this one features a little less than 20 hikes, the longest of which is 5.2 miles. Most of these hikes can be completed in an afternoon, and even those with modest physical abilities will find some great walks here. All hikes feature a detailed sketch map and route description, with GPS coordinates for the trail head. Each hike also describes what sort of restrictions are in place for your best friend under the heading Canine Compatibility.

I like the hikes listed in this book that I have personally taken. The San Andreas Fault trail and Chitactac trail are among the most informative nature trails I have seen in the area, and Castle Rock State Park is a gem. But missing from this guide are some of the spectacular Redwoods that grace the Santa Cruz Mountains. Not far from Castle Rock is Big Basin State Redwood Park, and it features the most extensive old growth Redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains. Less than an hour from San Jose, it deserves a visit. I would also have included the waterfall hikes in Uvas county park, also relatively close to San Jose. That said, the hikes in this guide will get you into some of the nicest parts of the South Bay area. You cannot go wrong with any book by this author. Get it and enjoy.

The hikes are great, but there are others that could be included and since I live here--I guess I wouldn't buy it if I didn't--I would like a more thorough listing. What here is great, though.