All In A Day's Work

Easy Day Hike - Wilder State Park in California. The Old Cove Landing Trail can be combined with the Ohlone Bluff Trail for a 3.75 mile hike one way. Continue to Four Mile Beach for a 10.5 mile round trip hike or ride.

Why don't you join horse patrol with us? It's a great way to give back to the community.   I look at my friend who's saying this to me and am mentally shaking my head.  If she only knew how much I give to the community everyday I work at 911.   But, the idea rolls round and round in my head until finally it takes root a couple of years later and I decide to go for it and ride the trails of my favorite park while in uniform.
Wilder State Park is a wonderful place,  unique and beautiful and really like no place else I've been,  and I call this park home.  So I finally decide to start helping protect this lovely park and help others to enjoy it too while riding the trails in uniform.

What I don't know when I sign on to start helping in this park is that there is an incredible trail normally closed to horses that horse patrolers are allowed to ride.  The Old Cove/Bluff/Ohlone Trail starts at the visitor center parking lot and swings out along Wilder Beach and goes the distance along the bluffs to Four Mile Beach and beyond.  While cruising this gem of a trail,  pelicans fly in formation overhead,  in a V just like ducks.   Seagulls swoop this way and that.  Harbor Seals sun themselves on the low cut cliffs below.  An occasional pod of dolphins frolics in the surf as they cruise by in the cool water below us.  Bunnies and squirrels run this way and that being very very busy out there in this wild place they call home.  And even on the ride to the trailhead if you are an astute observer,  you might see one of the parks long tailed weasels scampering about as we did.

Today, my friend and I rode that trail once again.   Today's ride took us beyond where we'd ridden previously.  Sheer cliff faces,  multihued turquoise waters,  birds dipping,  soaring and flying all about, seals sunning themselves and then taking turns jumping off the rocky point to cool off in the ocean and lovely little yellow wildflowers left of the summer's abundance alternately charmed us and then took our breath away as we cruised along the cliffs of Wilder above the open ocean savoring every minute we were privileged to patrol the land's edge of our enchanting coastline.  All in a day's work for Wilder's Mounted Horse Patrol.