Cassie and Chris tied the knot on October 11th with as much fanfare as our semi-locked-down state would allow, and the festivities lasted well into Sunday evening. We had talked about possibly hiking on Monday before the fam all departed for home on Tuesday, and so it happened that we drove with Carter and Dani south and west from San Jose to Castle Rock State Park, accessed via Skyline Drive that runs along the crest of the Santa Cruz mountains. Some online research earlier in the day revealed that most of the park was open to hikers, but that the trail network there was temporarily restricted to allow only one-way traffic – from the map Chris found on the park web site, it seemed we could start west from the road and do a figure 8 loop, swooping west down a ravine and then a traverse below the ridgeline, then turn back east along the top of the ridge to hit the park’s namesake highpoint before circling back to the car. Coming as we were from Hwy 17, we found a number of cars parked along the road outside a locked gate to a gravel parking lot – we found an open slot and parked here as well, only to find as we geared up and started to walk that this the overflow parking area, and the main visitor center and paved parking was a few hundred yards further down the road. No matter, as we were on the east loop of our figure 8 anyway, so we walked westward down a broad trail, first to the visitor center and then down said ravine following the Saratoga Gap trail. After a fairly sharp descent, we reached a small footbridge over the slightly-damp creek and found our first junction and one-way traffic signs – we went left, continuing westward on the Saratoga Gap trail. We soon emerged from the shady oak canopy into bright sunshine, treated to expansive views southward over Monterey Bay in the distance. We expected the vista to be compromised with the massive fires that swept through this area just a couple of months ago, but, apart from a couple of wisps of smoke over a few ridges to the west, we could see no apparent evidence of the burn, at least from where we were. We made our way over the undulating path to a connector trail that led steeply north – this we took, soon reaching the ridge line and turning east on the Ridge trail. Stopping briefly at an observation point just off the main route, we continued east past Goat Rock and back to the junction we’d passed on our descent. From here, we headed back up the ravine – the effects of the previous evening’s partying were telling on three of us, and we decided to skip visiting Castle Rock and head directly back to the car. Dani and Carter had gotten some distance ahead by this point, and, not realizing that the ravine trail led straight up to our parking spot, they turned back to the visitor center and walked an additional quarter mile as a result. Our loop ended up being 3.2 miles with 565’ of gain and loss – a nice bit of exercise. We’ll come back when things are greener and wetter (and when some of us are less hungover).