Garland Ranch Regional Park

"Fun with the Family"

The primary public venue for outdoor recreation in the valley, the park runs along the river and up onto the ridges in oak forests—5,000 acres of wilderness crisscrossed by trails. The most popular paths are the easy Lupine Loop, the Buckeye, and the Waterfall Trail to the mesa. In springtime wildflowers explode in great colorful clouds, water rushes over the falls, and lush grass surrounds the pond on the mesa. Up here views of the entire valley are mesmerizing.
Near the parking lot, picnic sites beside the river are pleasant on hot days. JohnSteinbeck wrote in Cannery Row, “The Carmel [River] crackles among round boulders,
wanders lazily under sycamores, spills into pools, drops in against banks where crayfish ive . . . frogs blink from its banks and the deep ferns grow beside it. It’s everything
a river should be.”