Better than expected

Coppertone and I were not entirely sure what to expect from Annadel given its close proximity to Santa Rosa.  We thought it might be more of an urban park with lots of trails and little nature.  It turns out there's plenty of acreage here to spread people out enough such that we found some quiet moments of solitude and nice views of the surrounding terrain.

Driving into the park made us think we had made a mistake.  The number of people walking and riding on Channel Drive into the park was pretty large.  The one lane road leading to the horse trailer parking where we started out made passing people and cyclists going two abreast a little nerve wracking.  Then, once we started off on the main fire road from the trailhead it seemed walkers were outnumbered by cyclists by 20 to 1.  What had we gotten ourselves into?

With distance from the trailhead and once we'd gotten off of the fire road things calmed down a lot.  We were treated to gently rolling hills that provided scenic vistas in places without the pain of steep sections found elsewhere in Sonoma Valley.

We tried to make a couple of loops and keep our trail duplication to a minimum, which came to a total of 10.2 miles.  I'd say we're only about a quarter done with the trails in the park.