The San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge is one of the refuges in the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge Complex. Of all the refuges, this one has the longest trail, so my daughter and I decided to try this park out first yesterday on a maiden voyage to the complex. We had a blast, and I know that we will be coming back here in the winter to see the great migration of Aleutian cackling geese and Sandhill cranes. I was really excited that we saw several Riparian brush rabbits right near the parking lot.
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Ed R. Levin County Park is a 1,558 acre county park in Milpitas that combines elements of an urban park with a wilderness area open space park. I made a maiden voyage to this park with my daughter yesterday afternoon. Although the hike that we did around the perimeter of Sandy Wool Lake was appropriate for the littlest hikers, there is a lot more to explore. Indeed, there is the best of both worlds in this park: my daughter has already told me that she can't wait to come back here "when the virus is over" so that she can play on the very cool looking playground structure, and there are two trails in Ed Levin that connect into Mission Peak Regional Park for a longer hike (see here). Seems like we will definitely be heading back.
Last week, my 2-year-old daughter and I went to Morgan Territory midweek. I took her for the first time to this park; I had been here before to scope out this nice spot that was easily walkable for her. It packed an even greater punch than I realized! It was a great way to spend a nice spring day in Livermore.
I've mostly been hiking midweek during the portion of the day that I have parenting duty with my toddler. I'm a bit anxious about hiking on the weekend, and it's nice for her to get out of the house safely with me for some social-distancing-appropriate activities. But because she is a bit big for the carrier and a bit small for real hiking, our outings have been on the short and easy side. We made a wonderful little trip to Bishop Ranch Regional Park in nearby San Ramon. It was perfect for us!
As I wrote about our recent trip to Tassajara Creek Regional Park, I have been limited recently in my ability to hike. I have only been to the parks mid-week when I have my very young daughter with me. So we aren't really hiking for distance as much as hiking to make close observations about the natural world around us. Today we went to Livermore's Sycamore Grove Park and we had a blast noticing the different wildflowers blooming and wading in the Arroyo del Valle.
It's been harder to go out hiking since the shelter-in-place orders came down. I can't go for a long hike at all during the week because I am both working from home and taking care of my toddler daughter. And during the weekend, I am reluctant to go out because the parks were packed the first couple weekends of the quarantine: I want both to avoid the folks who are irresponsible and to keep the crowds down so that government agencies don't close ALL of the parks in the area. So mostly, I have been taking very short trips with my daughter to open space parks mid-week. On Monday, we explored Tassajara Creek Regional Park for the first time.
After getting the news on Wednesday that the East Bay Regional Park District is shutting down several of its more popular parks for several weeks to help to stop the spread of COVID-19, I decided to make a farewell visit on Thursday to one of my all-time favorite parks: Sunol Regional Wilderness. The weather has been very unpredictable in Livermore. Earlier in the day we even got hail! So when I was finally able to venture out, I got some pretty dramatic lighting as the clouds broke up to let the sunshine pour in. Although I am very saddened that the park is closing, I support the Park District's decision and I did feel a bit of hope watching the beautiful valley flood with light.
The shelter-in-place ordinances in both the Bay Area counties and, now, in the whole state of California have been a major adjustment. I am *so* grateful that hiking and walking is compatible with social distancing as we all do our part to flatten the curve, so that we can keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. Because we have been having intermittent rain showers in the Bay, it's been a little hard to get out, even though we all need to walk in the sunshine more than ever. So when the rain cleared up this weekend for a few hours, we headed over to the Arroyo Mocho Trail, to a segment of it that is in our neighborhood.
Yesterday was the first day of March, and it was a great day to visit a favorite place: Picchetti Ranch Open Space in Cupertino!
I've been working on building a landing page for all of the California State Parks that I have visited, and in sorting through the many parks of Northern California, I started to notice that there were several parks that I visited many years ago that have not made it into my blog. Although I do have photos from those trips, they are from older cameras and the quality of the images is not as good as the camera I am using now. So this is a single post to remember three trips from years past: 1) Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve (in Guerneville), 2) Ed Z'berg Sugar Pine Point State Park (in Tahoe), and 3) Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park (in Big Sur). The photos are not as good as what I can do now, but the memories of these places sure are powerful and dear.
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