Peter's Canyon

Driving Directions

• Exit 55 Freeway @ Chapman Ave and head East
• Turn Right @ Jamboree Road
• Turn Right @ Canyon View Ave park entrance is on the left almost right away

This is a regional park with easy access in East Orange not far from Santiago Canyon College. Since Daniel and I got started a little late before meeting up with his Momma in the evening we decided to check it out since it was a gorgeous hot sunny day.

When I looked up Peter’s Canyon I noticed it is a popular destination for waterfowl and thus bird watchers, so I was kind of excited to see some interesting birds. It does cost $3 dollars to park in the dirt allotted parking area, which situates you directly in front of the trailhead. We got going right away because of the aforementioned time constraints.

Right away my impression was that the trail was fashioned more for the trail runner than anything. I explained this to Daniel, which prompted him to experiment with trail running.

There was a beautiful field of yellow wildflowers that spanned across the beginning part of our hike. The field was overgrown, well into the trail brushing us as we passed. This would have been fine had it not been for the considerable number of bees inhabiting the flora; an expedient escape was called for.

After a close pass of the surrounding neighborhood a rather intimidating hill was revealed. Confident at this point in Daniel’s hiking ability I said “lets charge it” and so we did. He actually kept up pretty well until the final push where I purposely pulled away so that I could get his picture; I was proud but gassed haha. The view from the top displayed the reservoir nicely, unfortunately it also reminded me how close the houses right behind were (oh well).

We discovered we needed to head back down part of the hill to cut over to the reservoir, so that was a lot more fun. After cutting through some cacti (which was also bee infested) we came to a bench that overlooked the reservoir and we deemed this the spot for snack-time (despite Daniel’s request of the standard waterfall where we have our snack). I failed to see much in the way of birds, but it was still a cool little hike in which: ladybugs were found, rabbits were chased and most importantly… bees were avoided.