April Adventure: Almaden Quicksilver Park

Confession: I am afraid of spiders. For the most part I am a logical being and I understand that the likelihood of death by a spider bite is incredibly low, but that doesn’t stop me from believing death is imminent every time I see a spider. With that said, I had to confront some serious spider phobias on my last hike.

Getting to Almaden Quicksilver Park was an adventure in itself. I had been there before for a fieldtrip, but we had entered through a surrounding neighborhood that I couldn’t remember anymore. We ended up going through the entrance at the far side of the park which meant that the trails we hiked on where fairly empty. This was great in that it’s nice to hike with your friends and not be constantly surrounded by other people when you are trying to just be outside in nature by yourselves, but it’s also incredibly unfortunate when it appears you are hiking straight into the Land of Spiders and no one appears to have knocked down any of the webs for you.

My poor friend Alec turned into our spider shield as my roommate and I crouched behind him for at least a mile total of the trail (that’s definitely one disadvantage of being tall). The morning sun lit up the webs perfectly so we could see every terrifying strand handing down from the trees across the path and creating intricate patterns above our heads. At one point the nerd inside of me (and the part of me that really wanted to say forget it and go home) started quoting Ron from Harry Potter. Thankfully no one listed to me and once we made it out of serious spider territory the hike was great.

We even journeyed off the trail (just barely) and climbed a rock that looked interesting.

But the best part was finally settling down to eat an amazing salad and some cookies on the floor (we were too dusty and dirty to sit on anything nicer).