My weekly ramble

From my front door

I read the post “From my front door” last week on one of the blogs I’m following “The helpful hiker” and it totally inspired me to write a blog post about the same topic. What can you find in a 1-mile-radius of your house? Lauren herself was inspired by the April theme “From your own front door” of outdoor bloggers. So I went on a little trip and took some shots along the way. I actually rode my bike to be a bit faster and I realized that I should do many more errands on my bike as I already do, because everything is so close! I left our garage and turned around to take a pic of our street. It is actually quite short.

Then I rode down Gunar Drive where you can find a pretty big and beautiful palm tree.

Our neighborhood is called Cambrian Park and my next stop was Starbucks, our local coffee place. I really disapprove that such a big chain rules the American coffee culture and often doesn’t leave enough space for individual and diverse coffee venues. In a suburban area like ours you hardly find a different place for coffee than Starbucks or Peet’s. But, it’s the place to go in our neighborhood, it’s the place where you’ll always meet someone you know. That’s what I did last week because the two lovely ladies in the picture are some friends of mine who enjoy their morning coffee in the sun 🙂

Exactly 1.0 miles southeast from my front door is Target. Everyone knows you can literally get everything at “Tar-jé”.

Riding in the other direction towards Campbell it gets a bit more exciting. You can go to the Pruneyard, where you find Trader Joe’s, my go-to grocery store, a big variety of restaurants, Marshall’s, banks, a movie theatre, many more stores, and Sports Basement, my favorite Sports and Outdoor store.

It seems that there is only shopping close by, but that’s not true. Doerr Park is only half a mile from our house. It has a two play structures, one of them is just being expanded, a basketball court, three tennis courts, a baseball field, a couple BBQs with picnic tables and a pretty spacious lawn.

A bit farther, exactly 1.0 mile northwest from our house is the Campbell Park, one way to enter the Los Gatos Creek Trail where I probably ran about 500 miles in the last years. It is a 9.7-mile (15.6 km) pedestrian and bicycle trail that stretches from Lexington Reservoir in Los Gatos, through Campbell to Meridian Avenue, San Jose alongside Los Gatos Creek. Campbell Park itself has three Basketball courts and a playground with an area for toddlers. There is plenty of parking to start your walk, run, ride or playtime.

Just a couple days after the exploration of my close surroundings I walked over to my neighbor’s house to borrow some vinegar. Walking back home the two hundred meters to our house, it came to my mind that there are so many more important things in a 1-mile radius of our house. There are our girl’s schools. They can walk to and from school all by themselves, which is not necessarily common in the United States. And furthermore I realized that most of our closest friends actually live within in 1-mile-radius. This thought made me really happy, not because everything is good, but because I’m able to see the good in everything.