Discover Sunnyvale

Sunnyvale offers a variety of starting points for a hotel stay, ranging from parkland to culture. When planning your trip, you can first decide what you’d like to focus on: trails and open spaces, cycling, wildlife watching, theater, or history. These destinations differ in their landscapes, listed trail lengths, and themes.

Baylands Park and the San Francisco Bay Trail

Baylands Park includes more than 70 acres of developed parkland. It also contains 105 acres of seasonal wetlands protected as a wetland preserve. The park therefore includes both developed areas and seasonal protected wetlands. It provides access to the San Francisco Bay Trail, which connects 300 miles of trails along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at a regional level. This figure refers to the larger trail network. Cycling is permitted in Baylands Park. The parkland, preserve, and trail access offer different ways to spend time outdoors.

Trails and distances

For the other trails, it helps to compare their lengths and characteristics. The Calabazas Creek Trail is 1.1 miles long, and cycling is permitted there. The John W. Christian Greenbelt is 2.7 miles long and connects open-space amenities for pedestrians and cyclists. The Spur Trail is a 4.5-mile loop around the municipal wastewater ponds. Wildlife watching is possible along it. Of the three, the Calabazas Creek Trail is the shortest and the Spur Trail is the longest. The Spur Trail’s loop shape is part of its description, while the Greenbelt stands out for connecting open spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. This makes it easy to compare trail length, route shape, and the activities mentioned when planning your trip.

Theater and orchard history

Sunnyvale Theatre is home to a resident theater group, the Sunnyvale Community Players. The group stages more than 45 performances per year. If you’d like to make a performance an occasion for or a regular part of your trip, it’s worth checking the schedule for your chosen dates before planning your hotel stay.

The Orchard Heritage Park Interpretive Exhibit features depictions of orchard workers’ lives and the cultivation and canning of fruit in the first half of the 20th century. Its subject matter thus covers both work in the orchards and the processing of the harvest. In 1994, the City of Sunnyvale preserved ten acres of Blenheim apricot trees at Orchard Heritage Park. This measure adds a concrete example of orchard heritage preservation to the exhibit’s themes.

A museum in the Sunnyvale Community Center is located in a replica of the home of Martin Murphy Jr., one of the original settlers of the Santa Clara Valley. This connection to the area’s settlement history adds another perspective on the valley’s past to the themes of fruit growing and processing. Your trip plans can therefore include both cultural performances and a range of historical subjects.

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Go to the main travel overview: Santa Clara.