wunderlich county park

I love hiking here as it is shrouded in Redwood trees and is cool and soft on a hot day. i feel like I have gone far away when in fact I am only fifteen minutes from home.

This is a lovely place for a walk, with many trails of differing lengths. You rarely meet others and was a great place to walk off the excesses of Christmas. Much better and more interesting than the walk at 'The Dish'.

Wunderlich is hidden away from the masses and I hope it stays that way. Challenging trails--not hard but not strolls--are found here. You can link to trails that go up to Skyline drive. My favorite looped up the mountainside to open upon a field that bloomed with wild iris. Amazingly beautiful.

So I love hiking in the forest. There is just something about being in the woods hearing nature that honestly puts be at ease. My friends and I were looking for a place to hike that 1) did not require paying for parking and 2) close enough to our respective places. I decided to look up some county parks in San Mateo and came across Wunderlich County Park in Woodside. We packed up and headed out!First off, the park is off Woodside Road and might be missed if you do not slow down. The entrance is a little bit narrow for two cars so be careful if a car is coming out, you might need to pull over.The park also doubles as a horse stable and a history museum (the land was owned by the Foldger's family, yes Foldger's Coffee) so you may see some horses out on the trails with you.We decided to pick the Alambique Trail which ended up leading us to other trails at the top. We decided to stick with our particular trail and ended up in the Redwood Groves which was honestly worth the hike. You are in a sanctuary of Redwood Trees nestled next to a little creek. There was one bench in the middle that we were lucky to snag.Overall, this park has everything a forest hiker could want, an escape to nature. The only downside is the horse poop on the trails. They are open year around. If the parking lot gets full, park far off the side of the road.

I did two hikes here: Alambique trail to The Meadows then the Bear Gulch trail to the Redwood trail to Salamander Flat, then to the bottom on the Madrone trail; the second time was from Skyline Road on the Skyline trail down to the Crossroads then back up on the Alambique trail to the top.The first hike was my usual route. I love the bottom section through the redwoods. The top area is mostly eucalyptus and manzanita along with some laurel trees (kinda blah). I love The Meadows on a sunny day (which I had) as a nice place to stop, snack, and just enjoy the views down onto the bay. Heading back down you’ll run into redwoods again just before Redwood Flat and down to Salamander Flat. I didn’t see any salamanders in the algae-covered pond . The rest of the trail is bland switchbacks to the parking lot.The second hike was my first time starting at the top and going down first. I liked the trails although they seemed a bit steeper than my other route (I think both had about 800 feet elevation change). My start at the top of Skyline was foggy and misty. As I hit the trail it was as though it were raining with all the dew dropping from the trees! That cleared about ¼ mile into the hike and the sun came out. Of course I saw many banana slugs. I would definitely do this hike again.