My Great Uncle lives in Davis and we like to visit him once a month or so. However, we keep very different sleeping hours and we needed to find something to get us out of the house first thing in the morning so the kids didn’t wake him up. I individually plugged each of the waterfalls on this list into google maps and settled on a short 1 hour drive up to Hidden Falls Regional Park.

Before we arrived I read some negative reviews on the park’s Facebook page about parking shortages resulting in anyone arriving after 9 am being turned away. This might be true during the summer, but it certainly wasn’t true for us. Still, you may want to aim for an early arrival and check the live cam of the parking lot.

We started off on South Legacy Way which is a wide equestrian path with immediate views of the cows on the next mountains.

The path down to the waterfall is almost exclusive downhill and the kids were off to a great start running and skipping. HJ and I were lucky enough to see a wild turkey (we also saw two on the side of the road while driving) and we all saw lots of beautiful wildflowers.

The next path we joined was the Hidden Falls Access Trail. This trail was narrow and followed the Deadman Creek down to the falls. There were a few rocky areas on this path and we started holding the kid’s hands when we heard the roaring of the waterfall.

The platform itself was close to the waterfall about midway, so you couldn’t really get a picture of the entire drop, but it was absolutely beautiful and you could really feel the power. I’ve looked at a couple pictures from previous years, and this year is definitely something special because of all the rain.

After seeing Hidden Falls it’s only a couple steps over to the Canyon View bridge where you can see Canyon View Falls. This waterfall is significantly shorter, but it’s still impressive. My favorite details to point out in these pictures are the trees submerged in the creek. It’s really telling of the difference between a normal water level and this year.

After seeing the waterfalls we headed back on North Legacy Way. This was more wooded then South had been and this time we were climbing the entire return. It was definitely worth it, but I do prefer to go downhill on the return.

If you’re going to be checking out these falls, there are quite a few wineries right nearby that looked like they’d be great for a post-hike stop. We headed back to Sacramento for some delicious Dim Sum though! 🙂