Sacramento Bar Park / American River Parkway - Hike, Bike, Swim, Float and its Fauna & Flora


Published by 360 Pro , 10 May 2017, 21h58.

Region: World » United States » California
Date of the hike: 5 May 2017
Hiking grading: T2 - Mountain hike
Mountain-bike grading: F - Easy
Waypoints:
Geo-Tags: USA   US-CA 
Access to start point:Sacramento Bar Park

My current "extended back-yard" is the American River in Fair Oaks. The so-called Sacramento Bar Park is one of many parks which all together form the American River Parkway, Sacramento Region’s great recreational asset. The American River Parkway also includes a wonderful bike path along the Lower American River, from Sacramento to the Nimbus Dam and it's extension all the way to Folsom and around Lake Natoma.

The Sacramento Bar Park is pretty large (>220 acres, about 1km2) and if you don't know your way around, you can almost get lost. During the peak of the gold rush this land was subject to heavy gold mining. The river and it's banks were "mistreated" with big machinery. By now - more than 100 years later - nature has "fought back", but the gold mining scars can still be seen everywhere.

A big attraction is the river itself. The water is very clean and even during the hottest summer months cool (mostly below 68 F (20 C)). Fishing, swimming, jumping of bridges, kayaking, canoeing, SUP-ing or simply floating down the river are very popular things to do here.


This report is the sum of > 3 years of mostly walking, hiking, biking and visiting the American River Parks and of course a collection of some pictures of fauna, flora and landscape I took during this time. By now I walked most of the paths in the Sacramento Bar Park. For those interested, I made a detailed map of the park with all it's paths and gravel roads.

I also attached two gps tracks, one for the walk all the way around the Sacramento Bar Park from the so-called Footbridge near Sunrise Blvd to Bannister Park and back. The other gps track is for the roughly 60 km bike path from Sacramento to Folsom and back to the Nimbus damn on the other side of Lake Natoma.

Hike partners: 360


Minimap
0Km
Click to draw, click on the last point to end drawing


Geodata
 35205.gpx American River Parkway Bike Path
 35206.gpx Sacromento Bar to Bannister Park and back

Gallery


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