Mother's Day Hike at Redwood Regional Park

Redwood Regional Park is both a great place to bring young children and a welcome (and rare) redwood preserve in the East Bay. There are lots of great places to see redwoods in the far north-western portion of the state, all over Santa Cruz, and on the peninsula, but it's harder to find these beautiful trees in the warmer climates of the East Bay. I've been missing the redwoods since we moved to Livermore, and I am so glad to find this park, which is only about half an hour's drive from me.

The trail that my daughter and I did worked well with her stroller. We use a Citi Jogger Mini, which is pretty sturdy and can handle paths that are not paved if they are reasonably level and packed pretty well. We parked at the Wayside parking area near the Redwood Gate. We crossed the stream at the Fishway Interpretive Site.

From there we turned right, following the signs for the Bridle Trail towards the Fern Dell camp site (a walk-in site). The trail is about 0.5 miles, and her stroller handled it just fine. The stream had plenty of water in it in mid-May this year, but I suspect that it dries up mid-summer most years. There were forget-me-nots, horsetails, and ferns everywhere (not to mention the redwoods themselves). It was so pleasant!

When we got to the bridge crossing the stream at Fern Dell, we got onto the pavement for Stream Trail. We turned to the right and entered a beautiful meadow with a play structure for little kids. We had ourselves a nice picnic and played on the slides and in the sand. It was just perfect. There were other families there too, but it was not too crowded. When we were done playing, we completed the loop back to our car by staying on the paved Stream Trail. The whole hike was just under a mile, which is about all that my little one can handle right now.

It was a perfect little trip. I can tell already that I will be back here, both with my daughter and on my own so that I can explore a little more deeply into this promising park.