just breathe

After weeks and weeks stuck inside, at last a chance to get outside and breathe. A day to hike through Coyote Hills Regional Park.

The visitor center of the park was blocked off from parking, but we were able to still park up inside the park at the quarry staging area. By the time we were finished with our short hike, the only way in was to hike in from Patterson Ranch Road. The normal $5.00 entrance fee has been waved due to the cornavirus.

We hiked in through the saltwater marshes on the muskrat trail. In the photo above, we are in the middle of the main marsh out on the floating dock. We are wearing our masks because there is another family on the dock beside us.

 Following the Chochenyo Trail, we stop at a small bridge and watched some duck and geese and other birds swimming in the marshes.  (The Chochenyo (also called Chocheño, Chocenyo) are one of the divisions of the indigenous Ohlone (Costanoan) people of Northern California.)link



Again, anytime we are wearing masks, it means there are people really close by.

Continuing down the trail, we come to the Tuibun Village site. 

Coyote Hills is special because the park contains the site of the ancient village of Tuibun (pronounced “too-ee-bun”).  Archaeologists think the village may be more than 2,000 years old.link

While walking the trails, we used our newly defined skills from Animal Crossing-New Horizons . Yep, we were able to spot the Red Dragonfly, the Darner Dragonfly and the Banded Dragonfly as we walked through the reeds and cattails of the saltwater marshes.

 

 If you were to walk to the top of the hill behind us, a view of the entire San Francisco Bay lays out before, along with a view of the Dumbarton Bridge, the southernmost of all of the San Francisco Bay bridges.

Looking forward to where we are standing you get an amazing view of al 1274 acres of the saltwater mashes of Coyote Hills.