Today was an absolutely gorgeous day. My daughter and I decided to celebrate the cooler weather by going to a park that is new to us: Kennedy Grove Regional Recreation Area. We took a loop trail of a little more than 2.25 miles. It was such a nice outing! A really great option for families with young children.
0 Comments
Yesterday, my daughter and I both finished school for the year. Although I have work to do still, I submitted the final grades last night to the registrar for all the classes that I teach, and she had her last Zoom circle for her toddler class of the 2019-2020 year. So we decided to celebrate today by exploring a new park: Point Pinole Regional Shoreline, which offers amazing views of the San Pablo Bay and the mountains to the west in Marin County, such as Mount Tamalpais.
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.
My daughter and I had so much fun the last time we went to San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge that we decided to make a return visit.
The Marilyn Murphy Kane Trail in Pleasanton is a 1.7 mile paved trail that parallels the Arroyo de la Laguna. It is a flat hike through mostly open grassland that borders the riparian corridor along the arroyo. It's a nice place for an easy hike, and a great place for families with young kids.
The weather has been uncharacteristically temperamental this May. It's been hot and dry, then cold-ish and wet from one day to the next. Sunday was a particularly crazy day in the Tri-Valley because it started off raining, and then cleared up but was very windy. I took advantage of the weird weather and ventured out for a weekend hike with my young daughter. The park we visited in Pleasanton, Gold Creek Open Space, was almost entirely empty. Social-distancing win! Click "read more" to read about the park and the trail.
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.
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.
After tailoring my outings to toddler-appropriate trips to open space parks midweek for the past few weeks, I was really missing a real hike. So I explored a park here in the Tri-Valley that I had yet to explore, Augustin Bernal Park in Pleasanton. I went early in the morning on Sunday to beat any crowd. It was quite a roller coaster of emotions!
|
Archives
December 2020
Categories
All
|