Bridle Trail at Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park

We are having a heat wave in the greater Bay Area right now. My daughter and I decided to beat the heat in the redwoods with some social-distancing hiking during the morning at one of our favorite parks, nearby Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park, in the Oakland Hills.

I think that we probably hiked a total of about 1.25 miles on this easy in-and-out trail. We parked in the first lot, the Wayside lot, and then crossed the creek at the Fishway Interpretative Site to join Bridle Trail. This is a wide fire road and a sturdy stroller can handle it. There are a few rough patches, but mostly it's very even.

When you get to Fern Dell, a lovely meadow that usually houses a group camp area, you can join up with the paved Stream Trail. I had planned for her to ride her balance bike on the paved trail here because we recently had great success with that. But she was way more interested in just running around the meadow, which was filled with what I think was English daisies (Bellis perennis, link). So I followed her lead here, and she ran around, climbed rocks, and picked daisies to her hearts content. Eventually we walked along the Stream Trail a little bit, at least as far as the Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Grove of redwoods. Here we saw a really lovely grove with a very emerald carpet of redwood sorrel. About this time, it was getting hot, so we headed back to the car the same way that we came.

There were people about, but midweek it was very easy to maintain the 6-foot space for social distancing. People at this park were super conscientious about the EBRPD rules for using the park during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, which I really appreciated.