Posted today at www.mercurynews.com

Uvas Canyon County Park inspires hikers to pray for rain.

Mountain springs keep a trickle of water running down the park’s steep canyons most of the year, but the rainy season turns the park into a waterfall wonderland. Best time to go: a couple days after a major storm system soaks the South Bay for three or four days.

The park at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains west of Morgan Hill has easy trails for waterfall watchers and challenging climbs up the sides of the canyon – almost all of it shaded by a dense tree canopy. Hardly anybody ventures off the main waterfall-viewing trails, which almost guarantees quiet forest solitude on the less-trodden paths.

Accounts of my Uvas hikes here. Uvas pictures at Flickr.com here.