Hiking Sunnyvale Baylands
Sunday we got out and about despite my quip that it was our 7th weekend in a row at home. Of course we didn't go far; we stayed right here in Sunnyvale and hiked the Sunnyvale Baylands Park. It was beautiful weather, too; an unseasonably warm 72° or so in the early afternoon.
Sunnyvale Baylands Park is part of a series of public lands that trace around the edges of the San Francisco Bay. While we only visit this park once or maybe twice a year we're out here in this neck of the woods- er, bay- fairly frequently. Other parks that connect together in an arc around the south end of the bay are Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, where we enjoyed wildflowers this past May; the Stevens Creek trail in Mountain View, which we last visited in February; the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge which we last visited a few months ago but found closed (we did hike it in January, though); and the Alviso Marina County Park we hiked instead of Don Edwards and marveled at the wildly colored salt ponds.
The trail out toward the bay starts on paved access road paralleling State Highway 237. While 6 lanes of cars rush past on the other side of the sound wall it looks and feels almost like another planet here. Partly that's because this seasonal wetland (see pic above) looks more like a semi-desert. That wildflower bush in the foreground that looks red and blooming in the picture actually looked brown and charred in person!
The reason it's so dry out here in this wetlands, aka marsh, is that it's well out of season right now. The last significant rain was over 6 months ago. The next rainy season is about to begin. This spot will look different in a month or two.
Ah, here's a scene that looks a bit more like a wetlands. The difference is this pond (in the midground in the pic above) is fed by a creek flowing out from San Jose. Thus there's water in the pond and green rushes growing along the creek in the foreground. BTW while the creek and pond in this photo are in Sunnyvale, the buildings just beyond it are over the border in San Jose. And the mountains beyond them are above Fremont. Mission Peak is the high point there.
Here in the South Bay there are literally hundreds of miles of levees around creeks and enclosing ponds and salt ponds. The ponds are great habitat for waterfowl. We see tons of ducks, geese, and cormorants out here. We saw a heron or two, as well, plus a few red-tail hawks.
We didn't hike all of those 200-ish miles of levees, only about 5 miles round trip. We looped around the far side of a Sunnyvale athletic park where kids were playing little league baseball and then back through Sunnyvale Baylands Park.
The last leg of our hike took us past this dried-out pond, even drier than the one we started next to. This one's so dry it looks like it could be desert, with a broad swath of sand and minerals exposed.
Sunnyvale Baylands Park is part of a series of public lands that trace around the edges of the San Francisco Bay. While we only visit this park once or maybe twice a year we're out here in this neck of the woods- er, bay- fairly frequently. Other parks that connect together in an arc around the south end of the bay are Byxbee Park in Palo Alto, where we enjoyed wildflowers this past May; the Stevens Creek trail in Mountain View, which we last visited in February; the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge which we last visited a few months ago but found closed (we did hike it in January, though); and the Alviso Marina County Park we hiked instead of Don Edwards and marveled at the wildly colored salt ponds.
The trail out toward the bay starts on paved access road paralleling State Highway 237. While 6 lanes of cars rush past on the other side of the sound wall it looks and feels almost like another planet here. Partly that's because this seasonal wetland (see pic above) looks more like a semi-desert. That wildflower bush in the foreground that looks red and blooming in the picture actually looked brown and charred in person!
The reason it's so dry out here in this wetlands, aka marsh, is that it's well out of season right now. The last significant rain was over 6 months ago. The next rainy season is about to begin. This spot will look different in a month or two.
Ah, here's a scene that looks a bit more like a wetlands. The difference is this pond (in the midground in the pic above) is fed by a creek flowing out from San Jose. Thus there's water in the pond and green rushes growing along the creek in the foreground. BTW while the creek and pond in this photo are in Sunnyvale, the buildings just beyond it are over the border in San Jose. And the mountains beyond them are above Fremont. Mission Peak is the high point there.
Here in the South Bay there are literally hundreds of miles of levees around creeks and enclosing ponds and salt ponds. The ponds are great habitat for waterfowl. We see tons of ducks, geese, and cormorants out here. We saw a heron or two, as well, plus a few red-tail hawks.
We didn't hike all of those 200-ish miles of levees, only about 5 miles round trip. We looped around the far side of a Sunnyvale athletic park where kids were playing little league baseball and then back through Sunnyvale Baylands Park.
The last leg of our hike took us past this dried-out pond, even drier than the one we started next to. This one's so dry it looks like it could be desert, with a broad swath of sand and minerals exposed.