Car-free hikes

A few car-free hikes, in which one uses only public transportation, are available in Santa Cruz County. Here's the idea: You take a bus from downtown Santa Cruz to the start of a hike in a neighboring park or nature preserve. Then you take your good walk or hike. When you reach the end of your hike, you take a bus back to Santa Cruz. (For loop hikes, it may be possible to return to Santa Cruz on the same route you came on, but a later trip.)

The complete METRO bus schedule is here. Try it out. Leave your car behind, and hop on the bus instead. The bus fare is only $2 per trip (or $1 if you're 62 or over), and there's no parking problem.

At the moment, we have two pages describing hikes:

• Hikes in the Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, and

• Hikes in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. There are many good hikes in Big Basin. However, since September of 2016, weekend METRO bus service to Big Basin has been discontinued for budgetary reasons. The very popular hike we describe on the Big Basin page, which requires that bus service, is not possible at the moment. Please consider contacting your County Supervisors, along with the CEO of METRO (Alex Clifford), to urge the resumption of Big Basin bus service.

We expect to be adding additional pages before long, so stay tuned. Let us know (click here) if you would like to be informed when we have new hike descriptions posted.