Today Megan and I took a nice drive out to Mt. Hamilton which sits above and to the East of San Jose. A long and very twisted roads leads you out of San Jose and will eventually take you right to the top of the mountain.
I may as well add here that my intention in this goal was not to hike to highest point in all counties, just get there. There will be plenty of tough hikes and climbs regardless since, for the most part, no roads lead to the top the summits.
Anyways, beautiful winters day, and we could see quite far in all directions. On the top of the mountain you will find the James Lick observatory, which at one point claimed to have the world's most powerful reflector telescope. Oddly enough, he was entombed below the room housing the telescope. So currently it's the only observatory in the world that has a corpse resting beneath it. Clip of the telescope:
What's amazing is how clearly we could see the high Sierra to the East running North and South
for hundreds of miles. It doesn't come out in the pictures because of the distance.
Link to photo set.
That was such an amazing spot! And if it hadn't of been for your highest peaks goal we would have never even seen it.
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