Like a beacon, the shaft of sunlight bewitchingly illuminates Big Alma.
Big Alma deserves the adoration and adulation. She's a 1,000-year-old California redwood tree, a sequoiadendron giganteum, if you want to get scientific, the largest tree species on the planet. She stretches majestically 70 metres into the sky and measures 10 metres around her base.
Northern California is famous for being home to the most splendid redwoods, so my son, Alex, and I are hiking in Bear Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve to get an eyeful. The 580-hectare park is just outside San Jose, California, the metropolis that is the heart of Silicon Valley and the headquarters of such technology giants as Samsung, Pay Pal, IBM, Cisco, eBay, Hewlett Parkard, Adobe and Acer.
The Alma Trail takes us two kilometres through dappled sunlight to a stand of the most awesome redwoods. The largest is Big Alma. Alma is the Spanish word for soul and this redwood truly is the soul of this forest, the queen in a jungle of princesses.
The small crowd gathered there oohs and aahs and everyone takes their turn getting their picture taken with giganteum. It's exactly the scenario that inspires tree hugging. Alex and I certainly take the photo opportunity.
But the best picture I snap is of three women friends embracing Big Alma as the filtered midday light dances around them. It's also where we run into another Alex, Alex Cocina, from nearby Los Gatos, who is out hiking with friends. We get to talking and he provides us with the best recommendations for the rest of our trip. That means it's off next to Loma Brewing Co. in Los Gatos for a lunch of Loma Vida craft lager and jackfruit salad bowls.
Exalted by the brewery experience, we plan our own impromptu, self-guided beer tour.
After catching an Uber back to downtown San Jose, we hit ISO Beers to sip Modern Times Tenbier on the sunny patio; Original Gravity Public House for Kolsch Cali Coast in the beer garden; and Floodlight Brewing for its own Remain Present India pale lager on the rooftop terrace.
To work off that beer the next day, we do some bouldering at The Studio Indoor Climbing Gym, followed by the IMAX movie Back from the Brink: Saved from Extinction at The Tech Interactive (formerly The Tech Museum).
As Canadian guys, we can't help but seek out hockey. So, as we emerge from the urban, palm tree forest, there it is: the 17,500-seat SAP Centre, a silver-sided edifice better known as the Shark Tank, which is the home rink of the National Hockey League's San Jose Sharks.
This is definitely going to be NHL hockey, California-style.
Alex and I have walked three blocks up downtown's main drag of Santa Clara Street to the arena from our hotel, the Art Deco landmark De Anza.
The entire street is lined with palm trees, but the swath of widened sidewalk approaching SAP Centre is populated with even more of the tall distinctive sentinels swaying in the early evening breeze.
We're Vancouver Canucks fans and the Canucks will be taking on the Sharks tonight. Inside, we find we're not the only ones cheering for Vancouver. Several hundred of the capacity crowd are wearing Canucks jerseys, Alex and I included.
We had lots to applaud with Vancouver besting the Sharks 5-2, with two goals coming from Canucks young phenom Elais Pettersson.
Similar scenes play out at the SAP Centre when the other Canadian NHL teams come to town – Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Winnipeg Jets, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens.
More and more Canadians are finding their way to San Jose, not just because they have tech business in Silicon Valley.
Canadians are also visiting San Jose to watch hockey, enjoy California's balmy weather, hike in the redwood forests and delve into craft-beer culture.
