Sunday Hike at Uvas Canyon County Park

Santa Clara County Parks is offering a "Healthy Trail Challenge" to encourage people to go outdoors and take a stroll, hike or bike instead of sitting in front of television or computer. The incentive is that after you complete 5 out of the 22 trails listed in their guide, you get a gift, however the biggest incentive I feel is health. I enrolled my family members for this program and decided to take the first hike at the Uvas Canyon County Park. It is located in the Santa Cruz mountains near Morgan Hill off of 101. Another reason for choosing this site was that I had read about the waterfalls here (imagine visiting waterfall near Bay Area!).


We took the easy and kid friendly hike, the Waterfall Loop, along the Swanson Creek. It is about 1.1 miles and covers most of the waterfalls. Most of the trail is shaded. We saw the Black Rock Falls, the Basin Falls, the Upper Falls and enjoyed the gushing sound of water during the entire hike. The uphill hike is steep at places, however my little one made it while snacking on cereals and bars and taking few halts to enjoy the nature. While coming down we took time to look at the ferns, oaks, California buckeye and poison oak trees. Throughout our journey we used our plant, bird and butterfly identification charts to figure out what we were looking at.




We spotted the turkey vulture and the California sister butterfly:



The hike took about 1hr 15 min. On our way back we drove past the Chesbro Reservoir.



My family enjoyed this first hike and can't wait to go on another one pretty soon!