20250406 Sunday, April 6, 2025. Stevens Canyon Reservoir and Costco Liquors

20250406 Sunday, April 6, 2025. Stevens Canyon Reservoir and Costco Liquors

Today started with squeezing some fresh lemon juice to freeze and take home with us in the RV.  We then had a Zoom chat with Price and Ciara to get caught up.  John was unable to join in Switzerland because he was out on some sort of adventure with friends.  

Dave stopped by and suggested a couple of possible places to go for a hike and let us borrow his Santa Clara County Parks pass. 

We had a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the mid-60s and very little wind.  We walked around the Stevens Canyon reservoir.  It was a nice gravel walk, although you had to climb up the face of an earthen dam to get from the parking area to the reservoir level.  The reservoir was built in 1935 to recharge the Santa Clara aquifer.  Today, it was nearly filled to the brim of the concrete-lined spillway.  There is recreational fishing, but it’s catch and release because the fish all have dangerously high mercury levels in them.  I would worry if the reservoir was a primary source of drinking water, but it apparently just percolates into deeper aquifers.  The hillsides are still quite green this time of year.  In the past, we’ve usually been in the area during the summer when the hillsides are all brown and dry.  

After our hike, we went to the Sunnyvale Costco to fuel up the Bronco and look at the liquor prices in California for Ciara’s wedding supplies.  In Washington, a 1.75L bottle of Kirkland Gin is $33. We were surprised to find it is just $18 in California.  There is a 10-cent bottle deposit, but saving $15 per bottle was hard to pass up, especially since they anticipate needing 6 bottles of Gin and 6 bottles of Whisky.  We also bought 14-1.5L California sparkling wine for the toasts and 36 bottles of white wine, although the cost  for the wines was not a whole lot different than those in Washington.  They didn’t have any of the red wines the kids were planning on offering at their wedding, so we’ll look for those in Redding or purchase them in Washington.

Strict liquid diet

We had leftovers from Chef Chu’s for dinner.  Tomorrow we’ll need to get the RV prepared for our return trip by refueling it and figuring out where to pack all that wine and liquor into it.  Tuesday, we’ll head back up to the city in the Bronco to pick up our new China visas, and then we’ll start on our trip back north.  We do need to get back in time to prepare and submit our taxes, and there are no more open clamming dates until after tax day, so we’ll head back up I-5.