 This 8-mile hike through Sunol Regional Wilderness was a welcome return to a beloved park after its temporary closure earlier this spring. This loop, which was new to me, hits many of the highlights of the park: Little Yosemite, the cave rocks, and the old barn in the High Valley. It offers gorgeous views of the distinctive Maguire Peaks, and I saw so many of a favorite flower of mine: mariposa lilies! I love these gorgeous flowers that look like delicately painted china teacups.
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 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.
 Acalanes Ridge Open Space in Walnut Creek is a relatively small park that serves as an important connection in the greenbelt between Walnut Creek and Lafayette. This makes it feel bigger than it actually is. There are some impressive 360° views from the top of the Ridgetop Trail, but the hike is quite steep at parts. I enjoyed this 1.5-mile loop, but I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I had done it without bringing my young daughter. It was a bit of a roller coaster, both literally and metaphorically.
 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.
 As a treat to myself this weekend (ahead of Mother's Day), I decided to take a nice hike on a loop that winds in between Morgan Territory and Mount Diablo State Park. I loved this 8-mile route, and plan to do a variation of it again next spring! Click "read more" to see my loop and more photos.
 As the shelter-in-place orders continue, I have continued to restrict my hiking as much as I can on the weekend. I am going out midweek with my toddler because the parks are just so much less populated midweek. Yesterday, we went a little further from home than we have ventured in the past two months, but still not very far: Round Valley Regional Preserve in nearby Brentwood. Click "read more" to see about our little adventure for the day.
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