There really aren’t any strict definitions as to what counts for the Make Stuff Up Challenge. And anyhow, we know I’m not a stickler for the rules (ahem, “daily”) so today I stretched the boundaries of what “make” means by making an adventure… one we kinda messed up on.
We had to run a quick errand down in San Jose and figured we’d take the opportunity to visit Sunol Regional Wilderness area, a spot recommended by friends for it’s green hills, open meadows, and creek that, from pictures, looked deep enough to swim in. I popped it into my GPS and we were off. Typically I would do a bit of research for an adventure, finding the right place to land when we got there, but this time it seemed small enough that I trusted the GPS to lead us to the visitor center. oops. Instead we ended up driving along a beautiful winding road to nowhere.
The only guidance we found was a series of signs indicating “park border”… like more times than there could actually be borders. And this wilderness, a mere 20ish miles from San Jose, was truly wild enough to (gasp!) not get cell reception to recalibrate ourselves with. In the end though, none of this really mattered. Sure, maybe we didn’t locate the spots that I remembered seeing in my friend’s pictures, but we were surrounded by rolling hills, oak trees and a little creek that followed in-step with the road. We pulled over at a turnout, and set out to make our own adventure.
There actually did end up being a trailhead at the tiny turnout so we took it up a hill… up, up, up. It started to get a little narrow and steep but we kept going until those somewhat unsteady 4 year old steps started making us feel a little nervous as we looked straight down a pretty steep drop, so we headed back down.
The kids enjoyed throwing rocks in the itty bitty creek and Ellie passed a milestone by peeing in nature. We were threatened by a bobbing lizard who we disturbed as he sunbathed, and saw some odd white “balls” in an oak tree that we determined to be tree bombs.
While we might not have made it to where we set out to be, we got to the point of a wilderness adventure nonetheless… quiet, wandering, exploration.
Sunol Regional Wilderness
http://www.ebparks.org/parks/sunol
The kids are watching a lizard bounce up and down at the tip of that log, threatening them to step back. He’s very small.
Jack finds some petrified scat and learns what really dry poop looks like.
fumbleweeds 
Oh, next time you go, you’ll have to make it to Indian Joe Rocks (I think that’s what it’ called.) The kids will love it! But wait till the weather cools down.