Thompson Creek, San Jose, CA

In San Jose, Thompson Creek is named for the greenbelt that gives it its best feature: the Thompson Creek Trail, a walking and biking path that follows the creek corridor through this east-side neighborhood, adding a ribbon of nature and a real recreation amenity to what is otherwise a flat-to-rolling residential tract. It sits in the Evergreen-adjacent part of the city near the Quimby and San Felipe corridors. Homes in Thompson Creek are suburban and single-family, on level to gently rolling ground laid out around the creek corridor. Past the greenbelt the streets look like much of the Evergreen edge, with the foothills rising to the east and Centerwood just across the way. The trail itself is still a work in progress. Parts of it remain an interim unpaved path, so the greenbelt is not one finished ribbon from end to end, and a longer walk can mean a stretch on the sidewalk. For a bigger outing, Lake Cunningham, a few minutes northwest, adds a lake and a large skate park. Coffee and dinner usually mean a short drive to Evergreen Village Square. Evergreen Coffee Co, the locally run cafe there, opens early on weekdays. Ramen Osaka keeps the noodle bowls coming late, and Curry Pizza House tops its pies with Indian curries like butter chicken and achari. In the other direction, Eastridge covers the department stores, a movie theater and the Round 1 arcade. Daily life here runs by car. US-101 and Capitol Expressway are the main ways out, and no rail station serves this part of Evergreen. The busier arterials sit toward Eastridge, so the blocks nearest the creek keep a slower pace than the streets closer to the mall. The honest tradeoffs are the car-dependence and the fact that the trail is still partly an interim, unpaved path in stretches, so the greenbelt is not fully finished end to end. But for a buyer who wants a creek path out the door and Evergreen's parks nearby, Thompson Creek offers more green than the typical east-side tract, and a quieter setting than the neighborhoods closer to the Eastridge arterials.