Villa Montalvo Arboretum County Park (Saratoga CA) ~ Short Hiking Trail in shades

Villa

Trail in a shade

This time of a year, most of trails on hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay are getting brown and almost no shade.   It is hard to enjoy hiking in summer time.  It might be too hot!!

Villa Montalvo Arboretum County Park is one of good trails in summer time in the bay area.  Most of trail in this park is under shades.

Nice trail under shades

I went hiking this park today.  Even it was very hot today, it was about over 85F in a town.  However, there was a nice wind and it was really nice hiking in the park.   There is a nice vista point in the end of a trail.   That is only part where does not have a shade.   The view is nice, we can see entire the bay area and hills on the east side of the bay.

Nice view from the vista point

The trails are short, there are some combinations of trails.  However, the total distance could be around a few miles and a few hours are good enough.   Many people on the trails are chatting and enjoy hiking.  

This is really easy hiking course in a spare time!!

Hidden Beach / Aptos CA near Santa Cruz ~ A quiet beach!

Entrance to a trail toward a beach

No hiking this weekend!

Due to a rest day today, I did not go hiking as usual weekends while kids in a Japanese school.
The Japanese school in San Jose and it is just less than 1 hour away from Santa Cruz beach.  I drove to Santa Cruz with my wife this weekend.

After dropped kids, it was around 9am, we filled gas and went to Aptos where is close to Santa Cruz / Capitola.   My wife knows a quiet beach near Capitola.

The beach called "Hidden Beach".  We took Rio Del Mar Blvd exit on CA-1 and made left at Summer Ave.   We parked on the street and just took a walk to the beach.   There is a small parking lot at the trail head, just need to drive a litter far on Rio Del Mar and making right at Townsend Dr.  Then after residence area, you can drive to the parking lot.  However, the parking lot is small and we only saw one empty parking spot on the parking lot in the morning around 10am.

Wooden structure of a bridge for a real load

From Summer Ave, there is a rail load and going through under a bridge of a rail load.  The structure is made by wood.    Then we can reach the parking lot at the trail head.   From the trail head to the beach, it is only 5 minutes walking.  There is a residence area on the left and a small park.

A small park next to the trail head

After the park, you can see the beach.   In summer time, Capitola is usually busy in weekends, but this beach is less people can quiet.

Benches ~ you can sit and view ocean

 View from the benches

It was cloudy in the morning and getting better close to noon.  However to pick up the kids from the school, we need to leave around noon time.   There are some people on the beach.  I think the most of people on the beach were the local people, some of them were taking a walk and some of them were running on the beach.

In summer time, Capitola is usually busy and noisy during weekends.  So that it might be a good place just to enjoy the beach.   You might need to carry some stuff to the beach from your car.  However, you can have more private time on the beach.

It was cloudy, but not many people there

(I thought I published this last week, but it seems that I did not.  This was last week activity on June 7th, 2014)