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Sonoma Valley Regional Park


I love to find the lesser known regional parks.  Sonoma County has some great ones. There are a bunch of lovely little trails in this park. I will outline three of them as they each fill a slightly different walking style. 
The whole park is Dog Friendly. Out house at the Hwy 12 lot. Lots of benches and picnic tables on the Valley of the Moon Trail. It will probably be hot in the summer, but has great early wild flowers. 

There are several parking options:
  • With fee or parks pass on Hwy 12.The disadvantage is that this is at the top of the hill, meaning  you are walking back up at the end of your hike. 
  • Railroad in the Sonoma Developmental Center
  • Arnold Drive  near Glen Ellen (Wheelchair accessible, but tends to fill up)
  • Carmel Ave. in Glen Ellen as it is close to food and drinks! Yep, my favorite

Parks Map
Valley of the Moon Trail:  All Trails Map, Wheelchair Accessible, 2.4 miles, 131 gain not steep
Suttonfield Lake Loop  All Trails Map,  3.0 miles, 282 gain, one patch that is very not wheelchair accessable. 
Buttercup Trail to Woodland Star Trail:  Look on the Parks map for these two. 

I have spent several days hiking around this park. I plan to go several more times before it gets hot this summer. In the blog I am not going to do much in the way of narrative, just pretty pictures.
I think this will be a spring favorite for me.  It will get hot in the summer, but it has great early wild flowers, especially on the west facing slopes.


 The Valley of the Moon Trail is absolutely wheelchair accessible, but if you are electric, make sure you have plenty of juice for the trip out and back, remembering that your return trip will be up hill.  This is one of the few accessible trails that gets away from all road noise. 



  
  This is the trail marker for Buttercup Trail.  
  Milkmaid Trail is similar, but a bit further east.
It goes distinctly UP. 
It gives access to Woodland Star Trail on the ridge crest.  Access to this trail from the Lake Sutton side are closed at this writing (March 2023) due to rain damage.
I deserve a medal for not hitting with my walking poles the jerks that climbed over the barrier with the "trail closed" sign. The reason for the closure is that the trails are really damaged and these self entitled people do more damage because the rules do not apply to them.

  

    
I do not have a clue what this is, but it is gonna be a beautiful blossom in about a week.
The dog is my temporary hiking buddy, Ziggy.
 
     The views up here are spectacular. And there is one picnic table.  Kudos to who ever brought it up here.


 


    



 


 
This is Sutton Lake.  Just a little dam made pond. The trail head is near the water tanks which are visible from the official parking lot. 
The Regional Parks map does  not show the larger Suttonfield Lake that is further down the trail.  Is that they have not updated the map, or is it not yet an official part of the park? I'm not sure. 
     This was a weirdness. The water was flowing onto the trail, and down this hole in the middle of the trail. But it never shows up again.  It must run into an underground flow to the lake.



  

This was a small adventure. At first I thought I was seeing a coyote, but it was actually another 2 year old dog that had slipped its leash.  The poor woman was frantic trying to catch him.  He was just being an adolescent, playing keep away.
I got out my lunch cheese  for bait and I walked with her, and then we sat down.  The whole time this clever dog knew how to keep just out of reach.
She was not an experience dog handler, so I showed her how to sit, and ignore him until she was able to nab him.
Most of the other people were sympathetic, and tried to help catch the miscreant. Except for one guy that told her off for not keeping her dog on a leash. Yeah there were people on the trail that didn't follow the leash law, but this was really just an unfortunate occurrence, 

  

Suttonfield Lake was part of the property the was the Sonoma Developmental Center. The center is closed, but there is some stuff happening there like the Sonoma Ecology Center. It is a shame that they could not use all of these buildings to do something useful.
My friend June used to live nearby, and tells tales of childhood adventures up  here. 

  I wasn't able to get a good photo of the cascade of poppies down the face of the dam. You are just going to have to go look for yourself.

I completed the loop. There is a muddy bit getting back to the Valley of the Moon Trail, but what the heck, its just muc.





Comments

ant b said…
See Sydney. I added comments!
Now if I can figure out how to make them bigger
March 31, 2023 at 4:21 PM
Saiorse said…
Looks like a brighter spring over there than in wet Wales! Love the flowers, especially the poppies.
April 1, 2023 at 1:37 AM
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