Yesterday was the first day of March, and it was a great day to visit a favorite place: Picchetti Ranch Open Space in Cupertino!
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Hayward Regional Shoreline is much, much nicer than I assumed it would from driving past it on the San Mateo Bridge. I had seen the Hayward Shoreline Interpretative Center, and I assumed that this was the only way to reach the park. The center itself looks nice enough, but the trails would almost certainly be noisy due to the traffic from the freeway. It turns out that there are actually three entrances to the park. I took the one on West Winton Avenue, and it was really beautiful--no traffic noise at all, but just lots of gorgeous marsh grasses and shorebirds in Cogswell Marsh.
The California Academy of Sciences consists of multiple science museums blended into one interesting building. Inside you will find a biosphere of a rain forest ecosystem, a fantastic aquarium, a planetarium, and a natural history museum. All of these different types of museums blend really beautifully into one whole, and the museum itself is topped off with a "living roof." The Academy is located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, which is one of my favorite things about the city of San Francisco. Click "read more" to see photos of our visit.
Chabot Space and Science Center is a really nice space museum in Oakland that sits right where Redwood Regional Park, Roberts Redwood Regional Park, and Joaquin Miller Park converge along Skyline Blvd. We went this past Sunday to check it out with some friends, and we really enjoyed it!
Ardenwood Historic Farm has become one of my family's absolute favorite activities for the weekend. It seems like most people associate this fantastic EBRPD park with its fall Harvest Festival, so it tends to be less crowded than Tilden's Little Farm. We had another lovely adventure this Saturday: we toured the Patterson House for the first time.
I hiked the northernmost part of this segment of Crystal Springs with two other mothers who have very young children. Because the trail is paved, it is perfect for people who use strollers. We didn't make as far as I would have liked, but we had a lot of fun nonetheless.
Despite flawless weather, I did not have the best day today at Garin Park, one of the two parks in the complex of Garin/Dry Creek Pioneer Parks. I made the most of it, but I was really off my game.
This was a milestone hike for me: my 149th and 150th parks visited! I opted to do this hike, recommended by the EBRPD for their 2019 Trails Challenge, a moderate 5-mile hike that links the two parks together via the Chabot-to-Garin Trail. It was a really different hike than what I normally do because it wanders in and out of a lot of suburban space in Castro Valley. I don't know that I would do this specific trail again, but I definitely plan to visit both of these parks separately in the future. They are very different from each other, but both Don Castro and Five Canyons are really wonderful parks. Click "read more" to see more photos from my adventure.
This 6.2-mile loop through the northern portion of Redwood Regional Park was a variation on the hike that I originally intended to do--apparently there was storm damage from the rainy winter that we had, and the Stream Trail was closed from the Fern Trail to the Skyline Gate Staging Area, where I parked. But, I made do and adapted my hike. It was SO lovely. It gave me a chance to see even more variety in the types of forest along my route.
Joaquin Miller Park is a wonderful city park, managed by the City of Oakland. It's amazing to me how lush and remote the park feels when it is so close to such a major urban area. I went on a 4.4-mile lollipop trail that took me on a pretty thorough tour of this park. Click "read more" below to see more details of the hike and more photos from the day's adventure.
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