I like rain. I grow up in one of the wettest towns in Europe. Rain makes me feel like home. And by the way, California needs rain. So I shout: “We need more rain!”. The only thing I didn’t realize that rain day will be one of the most boring days.
A week ago we tried rain hike. Disaster. I never saw such a heavy rain. We were wet in the second. Maybe it happened because we were down in the canyon with a creek. We came back to the hills, stay there for five minutes watching fog and rain where the trail was.


That’s why when I saw Saturday will have no rain I switched plans for a hike day. I was afraid of steep hills because of mud and waterfalls because of crowds. That led me to the one of the trails I pinned ages ago.
Purisima Creek Redwoods is one of the Open Spaces I never included into Summer hiking list because of popularity. But in the same time, I never did researchers about this place.
In practice park starts from the top of the hill and majority of trail lead to the creeks. There are few parkings. We selected North Ridge parking and went on the long half-day hike.

We started the hike on the Harkins Ridge Trail . It is one of the scenic trails I saw in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I never expected to see the ocean so close. Half Moon Bay was easily recognized.


Then we took left on the Soda Gulch Trail. This place will be awesome in the summer day with a shade from magnificent redwoods and moisture from the creek. Fog covered some part of the hills.

On the trail intersection, we took the right to the Purisima Creek Trail and followed the creek for a two miles.
It was almost a sunset when we started to hike back to the North Ridge Parking. Because Whittemore Gulch Trail was seasonally closed due to the wet conditions we selected shorter Harkins Ridge Trail.
And it gave us a chance to meet sunset over the ocean.