This flat, easy trail heads south from the parking lot across a seasonal marsh (impassable in the rainy season) and past a pond inhabited by endangered Western pond turtles. It meanders along a willow and oak riparian forest with grassland on one side and hairpins back at the end of the meadow for a brief traipse through a really lovely patch of ponderosa pine forest.
The best-looking mature ponderosa pines in the county are on this trail, and did we mention that ponderosas shouldn’t even exist here? The sandhill habitat of Santa Cruz County is the only place in California outside of the Sierra Nevada where these big, sweet-smelling trees grow. Proceed past the horse barns, skirting mixed evergreen forest, and back to the ranch house, and you’ve just hit five of the habitats here: pond, grassland, riparian, ponderosa forest and mixed evergreen forest.
