For once, we didn’t have much plans over the weekend, so when we woke up bright and early on Sunday, we decided to go for a hike. We began our day with a hearty breakfast at La Boulange, and then headed to the Purisima Creek Redwoods, an open space preserve in the mid-peninsula region. The preserve is located on the western slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains and overlooks Half Moon Bay, featuring beautiful redwoods, ferns, wildflowers, and coastal scrubs.
We started our hike shortly after 10am, when the weather was still cool. Once the sun was directly over us around noon, we began to sweat profusely, but luckily there were enough shaded areas for us to take small breaks.
The trails were mostly nice and wide, but the terrain was a lot more steep and rough than we expected. We took the Harkins Ridge Trail, which provided some nice, scenic views along the way.
Since the area was a natural habitat for mountain lions, I was on high alert the whole time. In the end, we saw one snake, but no mountain lion, thank goodness. 🙂 We stopped mid-way to eat our sandwiches for lunch, but being the rookies that we were, we ran out of water shortly after that which made the hike much more difficult. We finally made it back to our car about 2pm and headed straight to the grocery store to indulge in WATER! Next time, we’ll definitely overpack our water to stay hydrated!!
