Segment #8: Coyote Creek Ride

It’s fair to say this was the fastest twenty-or-so miles of the Bay Area Ridge Trail for us, as this was the only segment we plan to do by bike. The two BART segments that consist of the Coyote Creek Parkway comprise 21.6 miles of trail that is entirely paved and basically flat. Much more fun to bike than to walk, for sure.

We met up for our car shuttle at Coyote Creek visitor center near Anderson Dam, and then proceeded to our start point on Tully road in South San Jose, near the ball fields at Stonegate Park. There is a little awkward, non-contiguous section of trail just north of there, in Kelly Park, that we decided to bike up to first, then reverse down to Stonegate to head south in earnest. The trail keeps to Coyote Creek for the whole length of these two segments, though the creek itself is not always especially visible, and not always especially flowing.

As we rode south from Kelly Park along on the undulating path on the most northern section of trail, it must be said that, at this time, it is pretty characterized by the encampments of people living along the creek. Many of these are pretty established and are clearly home to their occupants. As we headed through the Stonegate section, there was a volunteer organization approaching the makeshift structures to distribute meals. While we elicited a few curious glances, this is a well traveled trail and the folks living along here know they share the space with a lot of people, including bikers.

As we headed further south, and particularly after we passed under Yerba Buena Road, the encampments disappeared and the landscape on either side of us was more characterized by open fields alternating with oak, sycamore, and eucalyptus canopy. We passed through parks at various times, stopping in one to have a snack (biking makes us hungry!) and watched a group of well-dressed people set up for a party celebrating a baptism. These San Jose sections (including the Penitencia Creek section #50) offer a way to see the more urban face of the Bay Area, and the Coyote Creek Trail allowed for a sort of ‘backyard view’ of a summer weekend in San Jose. We appreciated the weather on this Saturday, with temperatures topping out in the high 70’s. It is typically a lot hotter than that in the summer through South San Jose and into Morgan Hill, where the trail took us, in the late summer.

We kept rolling along, leaving the suburbs and entering the high-tech industrial park area that makes up the southern edges of the city. Here the trail widened out, became a lovely shaded tree tunnel, and we saw more people using it for all kinds of recreation. At some point, we transitioned from segment 54 to 55, but they are seamlessly connected, so we just kept riding. Increasingly, it felt like we were leaving the city behind and traveling back in time a bit to when the Coyote Creek Valley was colonized but still sparsely populated, characterized by orchards and olive tree groves, with the few houses there were along the creek. The creek began to have more water in it here too, and we started to see the percolation ponds that the Santa Clara Valley Water District uses to maintain groundwater, and in which fishing is allowed.

We took a break to rest our sore bums around mile 19, and watched colonies of ground squirrels bound around under the oak trees. Out here, we mostly saw other bikers, all of whom looked a little more serious about their ride than we did. This is a great pathway to include in a longer weekend ride.

We were starting to get hungry through our last few miles, and were happy when we rolled over a brand new bridge and found ourselves in the pretty little neighborhood that abuts Anderson Dam park and the visitor center where I had left my car early that morning. Ride completed, we dispatched to the local Chilis for our burger and beer, and made plans for the next hike. We followed it up with some Crumbl cookies to take home to our families. We figured we deserved an extra treat for trying out an alternative form of travel on our BART adventure!