Almaden Quicksilver County Park

Photo credit: Will Dawkins

I am featuring a guest photographer for this blog post: my brother, Will, who joined me on my hike at Almaden Quicksilver County Park in Santa Clara County south of downtown San Jose. Click "read more" to see his photos!

I follow the Santa Clara County Park office on Facebook, and they posted this guide to common wildflowers in the area, along with a list of trails that are known to get good spring wildflowers. We were trying to do the hike that they recommend at this park: Senador Trail to Guadalupe Trail to Mine Hill Trail. My little daughter, however, had other ideas in mind. She did not finish her nap in the car on the way there, and so she insisted on being held in my arms--not in a carrier and not in a stroller. So we only hiked a mile total, about half a mile each way to the historic Senador Mine where people used to mine for quicksilver (aka mercury).

So since I could not spare any hands to use my camera, my brother volunteered to be chief photographer on this hike!

The most important thing to know is that you can access the park here at the end of McAbee Road. This is not one of the three "official" entrances to the park, so you have to be more careful when navigating to the park. The trails are mostly wide--old roads for the vehicles heading to the mines. There are some single-track hikes too in this area, but most are fire roads.

 We hiked as long as we could with me carrying my daughter in my arms, but we had to cut things short. I would definitely return to this park to explore more. It's much larger than this one area, and it was very beautiful when we went. I expect that it gets quite hot here in the midsummer, so hopefully I will be able to explore before the heat really sets in. We did see some wildflowers, but I think that the really impressive flowers must have been further into the park along some of the sunnier areas. We did have some pretty nice shade at the beginning of our hike when we were paralleling McAbee Creek. Really, this trip only whetted my appetite to learn more about this area.