San Bruno State Park serves as a landmark of local and regional significance. The park is in the midst of the peninsula’s urbanization at the northern end of the Santa Cruz Mountain Range. The park is home to vast diversity of flowering and fruit-bearing native and non-native plants.
Blog Link: San Bruno State Park
Mount Tamalpais is found in the heart of Marin County. It has deep canyons and hillsides cloaked with cool redwood forests, oak woodlands, open grasslands and sturdy chaparral. It is the highest peak in Marin hills, which are part of the Northern California Coast Ranges. Because of its elevation and location’s proximity to the ocean and bay, Mount Tamalpais contains many microclimates, ranging from cool and foggy in lower ocean-facing valleys with their redwood forests, to hot and dry on the manzanita slopes, cool and breezy at the summit and shady on the heavily Douglas-fir forested slopes.
Blog Link: Mount Tamalpais
We left the USF campus at around 1:00 in the afternoon. We arrived in San Pedro Valley Park at around 1:40pm. At the park, the weather was cold but there were some sun. We started our hike and went to Riparian river where we observed a handful of native plants. We saw three different genus species of Trillium that were by each other. We kept on going with the hike, which took about two hours. We encountered many native plants on the way up and when we finally got to the top, it started to drizzle. Unfortunately it started pouring, so this hike was definitely the most challenging (traumatizing). However, this park was definitely a good place to observe native California plants.
Click the link to view full blog: San Pedro Valley Park