Valley Vista Trail Hike with the Fam

We wanted to take advantage of the nice weather on Saturday so we headed out to the Valley Vista Trail in Valley Vista Regional Park. It's another hike that Hubby found on yolorhiker.org that looked reasonable for the fam to do. This one did not disappoint. Lots of great views on this one!

From Davis, the drive is about an hour and 10 minutes. The trail is right off of Highway 16. You can find directions on how to get there here. We started at the second trailhead and parked our car in a very small parking area just after the bridge. 

We had to walk back across the bridge to get to the start of the trail. You just need to be careful especially if you have kids when crossing the bridge because there is no sidewalk.

This is where the trail starts.

The hike was a gradual climb in some parts and others just steep.

Some parts of the trail are hard to see, so you have to kind of guess where it goes. It's not too bad yet, but I can see that it could get worse if the brush grows more.

When you get to the ridge, it is a great feeling. You get cool views right away.

Below is the first knoll at about a mile in. We made it up and it was where we stopped for lunch. We were hoping to see the picnic table as mentioned in yolohiker.org but it was not there. We were thinking it is on the trail from Camp Haswell and not on the route we took.

After lunch, we turned and continued on towards the high point, Rumsey Knob. 

Amazing views as we looked back at where we came from.

It was about 1.1 miles to the high point. Here's a pic of Hubby and boys at the top.

There were even more amazing views from Rumsey Knob. We could even make out snow covered Mt. Shasta at the top. It was really cool being able to see it, however with only my Iphone for pics, you can't make it out from my pictures.

Family pic at the high point.

We had more snacks and hung out at the high point for a while before heading back down.

It was a lot faster going down, especially with the boys running down. I think that is what made my quads so sore this week. Overall, the hike was awesome. According to my Garmin it was a total of about 4.2 miles roundtrip. Another neat thing about this hike was we saw so many flowers. This was the first time I've ever seen so many in one hike. It was neat seeing sunflowers and what we thought was lavender. So if you can go on this hike in the spring, you will not be disappointed.

Have a great weekend!