‘Soft opening' of parks in Sonoma County met with modest crowds, major gratitude

Michael Perry was not happy that Spring Lake Regional Park had reopened.

“I’m more than happy,” said the Santa Rosa dentist Wednesday afternoon. “I’m euphoric.”

Perry was on his road bike just inside the park’s Newanga Avenue entrance, rocking the Lycra kit of his Fightin’ Bobas cycling club. His customary path through the park provides a scenic route to roads further west. When it’s closed, he’s forced onto Sonoma Highway, which is more dangerous.

“I’ve been riding here for 25 years,” said Perry. “It feels great to be back.”

That was a common refrain in open spaces throughout Sonoma County Wednesday. The day before, county Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase had issued a revised order allowing for the soft opening of regional and municipal parks, except for those along the coast.

Crowds were surprisingly light, due in part to overcast weather, and in part to the fact that this reopening came with conditions. Parking lots were closed. Except for those with disabilities or mobility issues, all park visitors must begin their outings from home, and without use of a motor vehicle, according to the revised order. Violators are subject to citations for a misdemeanor offense.

This has generated considerable blowback from people who don’t live near a park and can’t easily walk or ride a bike to one, said Bert Whitaker, director of the county’s regional parks.

“We agree that this is a less than ideal situation,” said Whitaker. “But we’re hopeful that if the public can really get used to using the parks in this way” - maintaining a 6-foot distance from others and wearing face coverings when they can’t - “this is going to be a pathway forward that’s going to allow us to ease restrictions” in the near future.

Implicit in his words, and the signs posted outside each park - “Crowded Parks Lead to Closed Parks” - was the warning that parks will close yet again if people can’t practice social distancing and otherwise get it right.

At Crane Creek Regional Park, nestled among vineyards just east of Rohnert Park, park aide Danielle Carney was posted at the trailhead in a beach chair, making excellent headway in the book she was reading, “Botany in a Day.”

“I’ve had two people come through,” said Carney, shortly after noon. “An elderly couple on bikes. They were so cute!”

The light crowds Wednesday were in stark contrast to the spring break-like throngs that descended on the county’s parks and beaches the third weekend of March, prompting officials to close them indefinitely. The unstated message: This is why we can’t have nice things.

“I think people are realizing that it’s a privilege” to be in the park, said ranger assistant Ashley Weikert, and if they can’t handle it, “it will be taken away from them.”

Weikert was serving as a kind of mask cop, ensuring that those who entered carried face protection. (Those who didn’t were let off with a warning). Her colleague, Sasha Ruschmeyer, recounted a conversation with a woman who described her return to the park as “a reunion with an old friend.”

Gwyndolyn Starling said she was overjoyed to be back on the trails of Petaluma’s Helen Putnam Regional Park, which she’s hiked for 20 years. “This is like sacred ground for me,” said Starling, who didn’t mind the longish walk from her home on Eighth Street.

“You know how college students talk about the freshman 15? I’m fighting the quarantine 15,” she said.

With the park’s main entrance on Chileno Valley Road closed tight, locals used a back entrance, just off Windsor Road, which has led to some tension.

“You can’t park there,” said a leafblower-wielding local to a motorist who parked near the trailhead on Oxford Court. Bob Shephard was mollified when the intruder identified himself as a reporter intent on taking notes, rather than a hike.

Even during the park’s closure, said Shephard, outsiders frequently parked on the street and poached its trails. With the entrance fenced off, some had been so brazen as to beat a path through his neighbor’s landscaping.

There was no such tension 27 miles north at Shiloh Ranch Regional Park, on the outskirts of Windsor. Though the parking lot was closed, visitors used a long, wide, inviting stretch of dirt and gravel just opposite the entrance.

Informed that yes, the park was open, and yes, he would probably not be cited for parking there - no one else had been - a man who identified himself as Dave from Forestville thrust his arms skyward and exclaimed “YESSSS!” as if he’d just scored the Stanley Cup-clinching goal.

Only slightly less elated was Nathan Strong, astride his Specialized mountain bike. For the first time in six weeks, he was headed into the park to ride his favorite loop.

To get his heart rate up during the quarantine, he’d resorted to racing his wife and three kids on a mile-long circuit in his nearby neighborhood. “Sprinting a mile on a bike is actually more work than I expected,” he said.

Had he ever sneaked onto the trails at Shiloh Ranch? I have not, said Strong, who mentioned the importance of “modeling law-abiding behavior” for his children.

“Not that I haven’t thought about it,” he added.

With park rangers vastly outnumbered, the honor system is in effect in many places. Most park users seem more than happy to abide by it - if it’ll keep the parks open.

“We don’t want to enforce as much as we want to educate,” said Tim Pritchard, coastal maintenance supervisor for the county parks system.

That morning, he’d rolled up the temporary orange fencing that had kept people out of Helen Putnam. But he hadn’t removed it.

“Because if we experience bad behavior, it’ll have to get shut down again,” he said.