Best Easy Day Hikes San Jose: Miller Ruins Loop in Mount Madonna County Park

Now that I’ve lived in the San Jose area for almost 3 months, I’ve developed a couple of favorite spots for hiking and biking. But since I like to explore as much as possible, I recently made a trip to the book store to get a hiking guide for the area. I was a bit disappointed at the selection – or rather, the apparent fact that there aren’t all that many awesome hikes in my immediate vicinity. A lot of the Northern California hiking books had mostly hikes that were hours away. This isn’t good for me because 1.) I like to hike with a certain canine, but she’s an absolute nightmare in the car, therefore I avoid long car trips with her unless necessary…

and 2.) while I like to do all-day hikes, there are definitely a lot of times when I want to do a hike but don’t have the whole day to do so. For those instances, I look for hikes that are going to take me 3 hours or less from the time I get in my car to the time I get back to my house.

In the end, I wound up nabbing this book:

Adam, Harley, and I picked an easy short hike as our first trail recommended from this book and went to a place called Miller Ruins Loop in Mount Madonna County Park.

The trail was pretty quiet, except for one thing that gave us all a bit of a heart attack. Check out where Harley is looking in the following picture – do you notice anything funky?

How about now with the exposure adjusted?

Yes, right after I snapped this photo with my phone, Harley started growling at the man hiding next to the tree, Adam jumped ten feet in the air when he saw him, followed by me yelling out of total surprise. The man was completely camouflaged and said that he was a target for search & rescue. We later saw a search & rescue dog hot on the trail for this guy. Had Harley not noticed him, I think that Adam and I would have walked right by. That’s definitely a first!

Besides that unexpected moment, it was a peaceful hike with typical things, like Harley chasing squirrels every chance she got…

…my capturing of a pretty moment in nature…

..and hiking by redwood trees and climbing around some ruins of some sort.

One interesting aspect of this trail area is that the park has white fallow deer enclosed in one spot. Apparently a couple of deer were given as a gift to the the Henry Miller Estate in the early 1900s. When the land was later purchased by the park, they inherited the deer. Fallow deer are not native to the U.S. The deer are kept in the pen because of “resource management challenges” to prevent the spread of the population. Don’t ask me what that means, because I’m not exactly sure. What I do know is that this was the closest to deer that Harley has come, and she acted like a bit of a maniac. I think she was actually trying to bite them through the fence like the nut that she is. I suppose that’s natural instinct kicking in or something?!

My overall impression of this hike is that it was pretty, quiet and super easy. It’d be best for beginners, people who are really sore and want an easy hike, or those who are just looking for a nice walk out in the forest. We also saw a picnic area, and it looked like a nice spot to relax and nosh a bit.