Tassajara Creek Regional Park

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.

The park is really tiny, and it mostly just feeds into a wide paved path that serves as a green belt for a Dublin neighborhood. This was nice because the wide path allowed plenty of room for social distancing. The path was not crowded, but there were some neighborhood kids taking walks with their parents on this fine spring day. For me, the real pleasure of the walk was seeing all of the daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus). It seems that someone's bulbs went wild, because they were everywhere, which is unusual since they are not native to California.

It felt like I was in a Wordsworth poem.

The park is so tiny, in fact, that it doesn't even have its own page on the EBRPD website. Indeed, the best write-up about the park online is from the Livermore Patch. Instead, it is looped into the information for the much longer Iron Horse Trail. Although the Tassajara Creek Regional Trail does not connect directly to the Iron Horse Trail, walkers, bikers and even equestrians can take a Dublin pathway to connect onto the southernmost tip of this long trail that runs along the old Southern Pacific Railroad line.

If I had been looking for a real wilderness experience, then this park would have left me feeling disappointed; however, it was perfect for a short stroll with a toddler who really enjoyed looking in detail at all the flowers and rocks. And we did see a couple of bunnies playing near the creek (one is pictured below, but it's hard to see). I am very glad to have discovered this park with my little one!