El Sereno Preserve

This MROSD park is all about the vistas! You get to El Sereno from Highway 17, and then peel off on the Montevina road (it's 1.5 lanes but two-ways!). You take Montevina all the way to the end of the road, so the vistas start before you even get to the entrance of the park itself. Here is a helpful blurb about the park on the MROSD webpage:

El Sereno Open Space Preserve is named for 2,249-foot Mt. El Sereno, part of a prominent ridge located south of the town of Saratoga and west of the town of Los Gatos. A distinctive scenic backdrop to these cities, the 1,415-acre Preserve is primarily a chaparral community with some wooded areas near the creeks.

I was lucky enough to go on this hike when the chamise was in bloom, and it was just gorgeous to see it in the foreground as the fog rolled in over Sanborn County Park to the west in the Santa Cruz mountains. The clouds made beautiful shadows on the waters of Lexington Reservoir below.

I didn't explore too deeply into the park, partly because I was pressed for time today and partly because the map doesn't clearly state that hikers have the legal right-of-way to connect the two parts of the Aquinas Trail. I would like to come back to this park to make it to the Lexington Vista. I bet that it's really beautiful.