Caves and Creeks and Conductors! Oh My! - Hiking Malibu Creek Trail with a Toddler

On this week's Friday Family Hike, we journeyed 30 minutes north of Los Angeles to trek the Malibu Creek Trail to the Rock Pool! After almost two years of hiking with my babe you can imagine that we've been all over LA and beyond! There are so many old favorites that we go back to again and again, so it's a lot of fun to venture to a new park and discover that it can be easily explored by a 2 1/2 year old. After Friday, Malibu Creek State Park is definitely one of our new favs!

No Reservations

When researching the trail information, we read that there is a $12 fee for parking, but there are also two designated state park parking lots available for free .2 miles away from the Park's entrance, on Mulholland Drive, so we parked there and walked along Las Virgenes Road into the park and to the trail head.

The view from Las Virgenes Road

It was a warm and misty (at times downright rainy) summer morning; perfect for staying cool and comfortable! Just steps into our hike, we made our first creek crossing and V was sure we had made it to the Rock Pool! After a little coercion and necessary time spent throwing various-sized rocks and sticks into the water, we were ready to move on!

The trail mosied ever so slightly up then leveled off when we reached the grasslands, a sprawling swath of meadows with so many nooks and crannies to explore, you can almost end your hike there, which we almost did. We found this felled log along the trail and decided to stop for lunch...

Malibu Creek Grasslands

Lunch on a Log

which turned into an hour-long playtime replete with V conducting Mother Nature's orchestra and a bit of quiet contemplation!

V conducts Mother Nature's Orchestra!

Downtime

I assumed, by that point, V would want to head back, but she wanted to explore some more, so we continued up the trail along a dry creek bed where I spied on the other side a huge rock face full of large wind-eroded holes. So, off trail we went, over the rocky creek bed and spent another hour carefully traversing the rock face and exploring every person-sized 'cave' we could safely climb.

We sat, looking out, enjoying our newly-found perspective perched high above the trail, sang songs, played patty cake, I Spy and even were lucky enough to coerce some hikers over to snap a picture of us!

Cave Dwellers

At that point, it was getting dangerously close to naptime and with all of the hiking V had already done, I decided there was no reason to push on, we would have to make it to the Rock Pool another day and you can be sure, we'll be back to Malibu Creek State Park soon!