Map: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/5023804251

We've been going through bike/walks around the urban landscape next to our house. We found a hole in a fence at the end of our street, so we went to check it out, that took us to 280 and stevens creek. There was a big tunnel for the creek, but a second huge tunnel, for I don't know what, it's big enough for a road (advance planning, nice).

Many years back, when I jumped a fence to get there, I couldn't go down, but someone nicely installed a rope ladder recently, so we went down and into the tunnel. That took us to the railroad (mostly unused) on the other side and connected to a street, or to sommerset park after removing a few metal wires that tried to patch a hole in the fence (thank you swiss army knife).

The secret BMX park is inaccessible unless you get to it through the railroad tracks from another access point. No idea who built it, it doesn't look official but yet it was well built: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.3322805,-122.0624639,157m/data=!3m1!1e3

We found that the freeway had doors in the wall, some you could just open and someone put chairs on the other side, maybe to just relax and watch traffic go by? :)

On the way back, I noticed that you could drive from a hole between the freeway walls through a railroad crossing that had been built for car crossing, to nowhere, the road stops there, although it almost connects to the stevens creek tunnel.

There is probably some interesting history and roads that maybe used to connect and don't connect anymore, or were meant to connect, but never did in the end. Either way, it was fun, we felt like urban explorers :)

Then, we have little lizards everywhere (well, big and small). The small ones are easy to catch :)

grippy claws :)

We've also heard racoons at night, and I was able to snap a couple of pictures. Thankfully they don't seem too bold and too much of a pest like we've heard they can be:

Howeer, what we have quite a bit is lovely possums, we mistakenly caught a few and of course released them:

such a cutie

it wasn't too scared to eat

we got another one the next day, or was it the same?

Ah, but the subject of pests brings us to gophers. Those fuckers have been making swiss cheese out of our lawn. Since repellents don't help, I've been using smokers in their tunnels, and poisnned worms they're supposed to eat. That seems to have helped with the problem, but I think we still have a couple left.

We even ended up with a skunk, oopos:

it was tricky to get out without being sprayed

We also have the occasional rabbit:

And rats:

I have many pictures of those birds, but these are hopefully the best:

a junko was feeding the wrong bird, oops

that was a lot of doves

After a while, built aa new mostly squirrel proof bird feeder:

We also got beautiful woodpeckers: [rigimg:1024:501*|]

We also got a few wounded birds:

And we also got a few hummingbirds. Those are cool:

Squirrels started by being cute before the bird feeder:

The only problem were the squirrels that started by eating fallen seeds, but eventually went to the source:

they look good when they start

clean the seeds by your doorstep

then they climb

and climb

and jump

and climb

and jump

The squirrels really became a problem, so I had to trap them and get rid of them:

I tried to build a defense, but it was pointless

on the plus side, I could capture all the grain the birds were dropping

so I had to bait them with peanut butter