Reason #42,965 Why I Love Living In The Bay Area

All the stunningly beautiful places to go hiking, just minutes away!


If you live in the Bay Area, or ever visit, and feel like getting out and taking a hike, I highly recommend checking out Bay Area Hiker. It’s a website that details hundreds of local hikes, with length, elevation change, trail descriptions, pictures, and a lot more info for finding the perfect hike for any skill level. And even better, all the hikes are pinned to a map, so you can find places to check out right near where you live!

This weekend we hiked at St. Joseph's Hill Open Space Preserve, which is only about a 15 minute drive from our house. It was a pretty easy 3.1 mile hike, up a hill above a reservoir, to some gorgeous views of the bay. We were even able to see all the way up to San Francisco, since it was such a clear day!

From the parking lot:

Looking back down the beginning of the trail:

Watch out for mountain lions (we see signs like this at just about every place we've hiked in the area, but humans rarely get attacked):

Climbing higher:

First glimpse of the bay, on the other side of the hill from the reservoir:

There were a ton of manzanita trees on one of the trails we took, aptly called the "Manzanita Trail":

Downtown San Jose in the distance:

In the hazy distance you can just make out the outline of San Francisco on the horizon:

We think this was a weather station, at the top of the hill:

The hubs, waiting for me to stop taking pictures, so we can get on with our hike!

At the top we could barely see the reservoir:
This is just one of the many reasons I love living in the Bay Area, you can easily get out into nature, but still be minutes away from culture and city activities. Growing up in rainy Washington State, we hardly ever went hiking, because when you live where it rains 9 months of the year, frequent hiking just isn’t an option!

Hopefully we'll have time next weekend for a more challenging hike someplace else, since we need to gear up for an 8 mile hike we hope to take while camping over Labor Day weekend!