More here than meets the eye

Coppertone and I did not know what to expect when coming here to hike.  We'd looked at the online map.  We knew there'd be a few miles of hiking we could do here.  So we figured we might as well visit and start mapping new trails.

We started out at the parking area near the Military West exit off of Highway 780.  This is the easternmost edge of the park.  The paved Mike Taigher Trail starts here and goes for a bit less than a mile to the north.  The path is probably more popular with cyclists than hikers, but there are some hiking only features here as well.  The real downside of the trail is that is parallels Highway 780.  Though there is a good tree line blocking some road noise, it is rather loud nonetheless.

Two unpaved sidetrails branch out from the paved path and venture a bit closer to the Southhampton Bay Wetland Natural Preserve which the park surrounds.  This is more of a true hiking experience.  And on our trip the added distance from the highway greatly decreased the road noise.

When we got back to our car we drove around to the Rose Drive entrance to the park near its northernmost point and drove down Dillon Point Road to the southernmost parking lot in the park.

Here we embarked on a leisurly stroll mostly along the shoreline of the Carquinez Strait.  There are a number of promising trails up on the bluff overlooking the shoreline here that we intend to map out on our next visit.