Photography Run!

I do my own adventure runs. The local Road Runner Sports has tried to recruit me for their adventure run on several occasions. I have a couple problems with that. First of all, I run 4 days a week and that is apparently plenty for my body. And since I only run 4 days a week, each of those runs needs to be a quality run. Training with a purpose. This leads me to the second issue. I do not run for fun.

When I told the manager at RRS that I do not need another training run during the week, he said "Oh no, this is not training. It's just for fun."

Then why would I be doing it?

If I am so strict and particular on all 4 of my runs each week (most are at different paces depending on the training plan), why on earth would I lace up my shoes a 5th day....just for fun?

You know what sounds fun? Not running. Watching a movie, reading a book, swimming in a river, stand-up paddle boarding (soon!), eating chocolate...or eating pretty much anything, maybe riding my bike, taking a nap, drinking coffee....

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, my homemade, solo adventure runs. Fridays are adventure runs. It came to my attention at my last half marathon that I have transformed into a true flat-lander. I never thought I'd see the day. I used to charge up hills, passing everyone who beat me on the flats.

But now I live in the valley and all my training runs are flat. That had to be remedied. Which meant I would have to get in my car and drive to the hills. If the hills wouldn't come to me, I would go to them.

If you remember, a couple weeks ago I ran up to English Camp at Almaden Quicksilver County Park. Without my camera. Of course there were bright purple sweat pea flowers lining the old stone chimney on a clearing at the top of Church Hill. Of course there was a momma and baby deer munching on shrubs just 20 feet from me. Of course there were old ruins of buildings that I had no way to take a photo of.

Today I brought my camera. I would hit up Hidalgo Cemetery by way of English Camp Trail and Yellow Kid Trail, stopping to take photos of English Camp, Spanish Town, the cemetery, and hopefully the humongous rotary furnace somewhere up by Spanish Town.

I got to the park early because I know it gets hot on those trails. After two weeks, I expected the flowers to be gone, as flowers don't last very long in this climate. I parked my car at the Vichy Spring as the parking lot to the trails wouldn't open for another hour.

Quicksilver park used to be home to a quicksilver (duh) mining operation. Pretty lucrative I guess. Quicksilver is also known as mercury, and it was used by gold miners to extract gold efficiently from ore. Without quicksilver, extracting the gold was costly and inefficient. So it was pretty darn important.

So mercury is everywhere out here.

As I approached the trail head, I saw a sign that wasn't normally there and hoped it wasn't closed for some sort of mountain biking event. Nope.

Oh, well that's nice.

I don't know if I'm big enough for a mountain lion to think twice about eating me. I never run outside with headphones on, not that mountain lions make much noise on approach. But I was running alone.

Two female runners came down the hill and saw me reading the sign. One informed me that they've been running here several times a week and haven't seen one. And they didn't see one today. The other told me to be careful.

Hum. Lovely.

Up I went. I thought about how I could simultaneously scare a mountain lion away while managing to get a good picture.

Up ahead I saw a flock of wild turkeys. That was a good sign. If there were smaller critters than me out and about, it was a good sign that I was not about to get eaten. It's not like the mountain lion is looking at these tasty little birds and thinking "You know, I think I'll wait around for something bigger and more difficult to come around. I'm not that hungry, I can wait."

The turkeys refused to pose for a picture. Sorry. I tried.

I turned off the main trail up English Camp Trail. Here we go. Off the beaten path. Totally getting eaten now.

I saw two little bunnies in the path. Good omen. Not anyone's breakfast yet.

My garmin beeped that it had lost satellite reception. What?!

Yes, I am that girl that stops and waits to collect satellites. I decided now was a good time to take a bathroom break, came back and it was still collecting satellites.

Finally we were good to go. I continued up to English Camp.

I was right about the flowers, pretty much. There were a few, but nothing like two weeks ago.

 An old tin building. There are picnic tables up here as well as a place to park your bikes, and a place to park your horses.

 The old Mine Office and Map House.

I turned to walk up to Church Hill to see about the flowers around the chimney, bummed to not see the deer in the brush, and I looked up and saw this:

 He stood and stared at me while I attempted to take the perfect picture.

Meh, they turned out alright.

He walked into the brush and I continued cautiously up the hill. Deer aren't a ton safer than mountain lions and are better left alone.

Here are some of the flowers I was talking about, although not nearly as striking as they were a couple weeks ago.

I came back down the hill and saw the little buck was joined by a friend. Two bucks stood munching in the grass. By the time I readied my camera, one had walked away.

Back down at English Camp:

I went up the hill a tad until I found Yellow Kid Trail, a small single track that nearly assured I would be eaten by a mountain lion. I reconsidered for a second and then followed it. We all go sometime, right? Not far into the trail, a ton of quail scattered....see....still safe.

 Along the Yellow Kid Trail, you can see the valley socked in by the morning inversion layer.

Just outside of Spanish Town (apparently no buildings remain of Spanish Town, so this is something else):

I would just like to point out that this building had poison oak growing out of its foundation. That alone makes it uninhabitable.

So apparently this is Spanish Town:

 And that glowing ball of fire is the sun. I believe the power lines were not original to Spanish Town.

The only thing that survives of Spanish Town is the cacti (apparently imported by them), the hanging tree (which I did not find) and the cemetery.

Almaden Reservoir down there, which I think I may have posted pictures of before from the downhill side of my Hicks Road rides.

Leading down to the cemetery.

I guess there are no longer any remains (I could be wrong) and definitely no headstones. But here's something.

I was just over 2.5 miles in, so it was time to turn around. I looked around at all the oak trees but was unsure of where the hanging tree was suppose to be. As I got back up into Spanish Camp, I looked around again for this ginormous rotary furnace (I mean, it's huge, you can't miss it) but didn't find it. I considered going around the next bend, but that can be hazardous as I have a tendency to stretch that a bit much. I always like to see what's beyond the next bend.... at some point you have to draw a line. Next time. Next time I will find the rotary furnace (which was apparently right there) as well as the hanging tree.

This here is a chimney:

I don't really know much about it at this point. But it's very prominent from the Hacienda parking lot and park entrance.

There's the parking lot....way down there.

A closer look at the chimney (thanks to zoom):

Some mining paraphernalia down by the parking lot. 

And then across the street from the park entrance:

The purpose of the Friday runs are to get some hill work, commune with nature, and have an adventure. They aren't very fast but they are challenging and, dare I say, fun. Not only are there many more trails at Quicksilver to explore (hopefully sans kitty cat), but there are other parks to check out as well.