Bella is handling all challenges at Henry Cowell State Park with ease now, so it's time to graduate and go out into the world of the unknown. I have never even hiked in Wilder Ranch State Park, but it's only about a 45 minute drive, being two miles north of the outskirts of Santa Cruz along Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway).

The coastal region is full of grass lands and shrubs, including poison oak and tick weed bushes.

These trails are mostly used by mountain bikers and are wide and hard-packed. As soon as we turned onto Wilder Ridge Loop, we found a 4 foot gopher snake pokin' along across the trail.

The Ridge trail goes up through this big meadow

There was an unidentified pond to the north of us

We unintentionally took a shortcut up to the ridge on the Zane Gray Cut Off trail

View to the west - a fog bank lies over the ocean at the coast

The trail was real rocky in this area.

Trails were not clearly marked, but I think this was the Twin Oaks Trail.

This dead tree looked like an Ent from Lord of the Rings, standing in Fanghorn Forest

Old Cabin Trail wound through a forest that had grown up in a gulch that had a seasonal creek at its bottom

About an hour later, we went on the 1.3 mile Cowboy Loop Trail which started next to this meadow filled with wildflowers

Cowboy Loop Trail went uphill - this is an eroded hillside with exposed rocks and coast live oak roots

From the top of the Cowboy Loop Trail, looking west toward Wilder Ranch across Highway 1. The ocean is at the horizon.

Across Highway 1, the Pacific coastline

View from the top of Cowboy Loop Trail.