mount madonna county park

Mount Madonna County Park is a wonderful redwood park - it is a county park but it is as nice or nicer than similar state parks. It is set in the hills.There are numerous campgrounds - with pleasant views of the redwoods.There are many picnic areas both for family picnics as well as group picnics. We have enjoyed picnics here. Several hiking trails as well.There is also an excellent archery range here.There is a small county park fee to use the park (however currently less expensive than the state park fees.)

We visited Mount Madonna County Park and camped in the Tan Oak campground on Memorial Day weekend 2014. It is operated by Santa Clara County Parks and seems to be popular among the San Jose/South Bay Area residents who want to get away from the urban congestion. The bathroom at Tan Oak is clean with automatic toilets. There's no shower; that is at the Valley View campground. We stayed at campsite #419 - if you have a few other friends to camp with, you could all reserve #419, 420 and 421 - those sites all merge together. There's yurts available at this park as well, but we did not use these.Overall, the hiking is nice - the Miller House ruins were interesting to walk through. The weather is cooler than in the Bay Area and there is an archery range that you can use if the Mount Madonna Bowmen are not using it (check their website's calendar). My young kids brought their beginners' bows and shot at the targets at the base of the archery course, it was a lot of fun. (Wear sunblock, there's not so much shade.)We wish there was a river or someplace to go swimming, that would have made this camping exceptional. Otherwise, it was just a nice, easy camping trip.