The Arroyo Seco is a familiar river that runs through Pasadena, practically through my late grandfather’s backyard. I spent years driving past it without ever stopping. This weekend, I finally brought my family for a visit.
There are a lot of different spots along the river one can choose to hike. After some investigation, this seemed like the best spot to bring our four year old as we are working on getting him interested in hiking. The hikes we choose need to be simple, accessible, and not overly challenging. He will be on my shoulders for some portion of the hike, accompanied by my photo gear.
It was a little tricky finding the right spot. What we found was a small parking lot across the street from a golf course. This is just north of the Rose Bowl. As we were leaving I made note of the number of people exercising around the Rose Bowl. Something I find questionable when there is such a nice little trail just to the north.
Once we parked, we weren’t quite sure where to go to get to the trail. We ended up going up the hill, a paved path surrounded by oak trees, wild roses, and a sizable ceanothus. When we got to the top we realized we were just on the neighborhood walking path, so we went back and took a side trail on the hill. There we found opuntia, datura not yet in bloom, sunflowers and more oak trees. This path was short but interesting, as it winded around the hill. I held my son’s hand for most of it since the path was somewhat narrow and there was a steep drop on the side to the street.
At the end of that path we found the crossing to the real trail. It was fun exploring that little micro-trail, but in the future we would just take the street to the trailhead here.
This trail follows the northern part of the golf course and the riverbed, up to a dam, and to very large bridges: the 210 freeway and Oak Grove Dr.
I would describe this as a popular trail, but not overly crowded. We passed (and were passed by) many people, but we weren’t bumping shoulders or squeezing by anyone at any point.
We saw a lot of coast live oaks, toyon, lemonade berries, golden currants, laural sumac, and some willow down by the riverbed. A couple of invasives we saw were wild radish (a new one for me), and dwarf nettle (don’t touch!). And of course castor bean! There was actually an impressive amount of golden currants and we plan to return in a couple of months to see if they have fruited.