Beautiful Places in the Bay Area

There are a lot of places to camp and hike in the Santa Cruz mountains, and everyone knows about Big Basin.

Big Basin is famous for their redwood trees. They have extensive camping facilities and hikes for all difficulty levels from the wheelchair-access quarter-mile walk around a circle of trees to a hike over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the beach! If you've never been, what's stopping you?

If you're lucky, you may have deer wandering through your camp in the early morning (it's happened to me!), or a creek running by your camp site. Keep an eye out for mountain lions, poison oak and rattle snakes if you hike very far! Big Basin is a State Park, so you'll see nature.

On my most recent hike at Big Basin, I got good photos of a bird and a lizard. Squirrels are also abundant, but less willing to pose. (Sorry, those pictures haven't been developed yet.)

last updated September 20, 2000