In early 2017, after weeks of heavy rain turned Swanson Creek into a torrent, roughly 650 cars showed up at Uvas Canyon County Park on a single weekend looking for parking. The lot holds 70. Rangers turned hundreds of drivers around, and on the way out some of them drove too fast on the narrow one-lane road that leads to the park, which is exactly the kind of thing you don't want happening on a blind curve. Santa Clara County's response was a reservation system: pay $6, book a day-use pass online or by phone, print it, and leave it on your dashboard.
That system was built to solve a rainy-Saturday problem. Nine years later, it hasn't gone back to being optional. The county's current park page states plainly that a pre-paid vehicle pass is required seven days a week, including weekdays, and that visitors without a reservation will not be allowed to enter. If you grew up hearing that Uvas Canyon only needed a reservation on weekends, that version of the rule is out of date. It now applies to a random Tuesday afternoon in August when the creek is barely a trickle and the lot has plenty of open spots.
What Swanson Creek Actually Looks Like Right Now
Here's the part that makes the current rule feel a little absurd: late August is close to the worst possible time to go see waterfalls at Uvas Canyon. The falls are spring-fed and technically flow year-round, but multiple hiking guides agree the real show happens between late February and mid-May, after winter rains have soaked the hills. By midsummer, flow drops to a trickle at best, and Triple Falls in particular tends to dry up completely in the warmer months.
That doesn't mean the hike isn't worth the $6 and the paperwork. The Waterfall Loop Trail still winds a shaded mile along Swanson Creek past Granuja Falls, Upper Falls, Basin Falls, and Black Rock Falls, and even with low water it's one of the coolest, most sheltered walks in South County on a 90-degree day. If you want a view instead of a creek, the Nibbs Knob Trail climbs out of the canyon to a panoramic overlook of the Santa Cruz Mountains, no water flow required. Just don't drive up expecting the postcard version of the falls. Save that trip for February.
The Drive Is Its Own Small Adventure
Getting to the park from San Martin means driving along Uvas Road until you turn right onto Croy Road, then staying on Croy for 4.4 narrow, winding, pothole-prone miles until you reach the park entrance. Partway in, the road passes through Sveadal, a private camp and recreation site belonging to the Swedish American Patriotic League. It's a genuinely odd stretch: cabins and recreation buildings lining a single-lane road with a posted 5 mph limit. You're not trespassing by driving through, but it's not a place to speed, and locals who've made the trip more than once know to slow down well before the signs tell you to.
San Martin Already Has Its Own Wine Row
Here's the thing most people miss when they treat Uvas Canyon as the whole reason to drive this corridor. San Martin has its own cluster of small, family-run wineries sitting right along the same general stretch of road, and most residents drive past them on the way to somewhere else without stopping.
Clos LaChance sits at 1 Hummingbird Lane in the rolling hills of Hayes Valley, next to the sixth hole of CordeValle Golf Club. The Murphy family has run it since 1992, when they took a backyard Chardonnay hobby in Saratoga and turned it into a certified sustainable winery on 100 acres. The grounds have bocce courts and enough lawn for a picnic blanket, and the tasting room is typically open Wednesday through Sunday. Clos LaChance also runs a summer concert series called KRTY Song and Wine, with the next dates landing September 10 and 11.
A few minutes away, Little Uvas takes a different approach entirely. Its tasting room at 255 Fitzgerald Avenue is called The Garage because that's literally what it is, a stripped-down, unpretentious space that stands in deliberate contrast to the manicured feel of the bigger operations nearby.
Kirigin Cellars is the property worth a detour even if you don't drink wine. The Kirigin family bought the historic Bonesio Winery in 1976 and kept its old-world character intact: 33 acres of vineyards, nine acres of cricket lawn, more than a thousand rose bushes, and a grove of redwood sequoias. It's the kind of estate that reads more like a small European village than a Santa Clara Valley tasting room.
Lion Ranch, at 645 West San Martin Avenue, is smaller and newer. Kim and Todd planted their estate vineyard in 2011 and opened the tasting room in 2015, focusing on Rhone and Provence varietals across 13 grape types. The outdoor seating is kid-friendly and dog-friendly, and it's open Friday through Sunday. Miramar Vineyards rounds things out on ten pastoral acres at 12255 New Avenue in the eastern foothills, a smaller family operation sourcing from its own estate.
None of this is Gilroy's Hecker Pass wine trail, which gets most of the regional attention. It's a quieter, smaller-scale version sitting almost entirely within San Martin's own borders, and a lot of longtime residents haven't worked their way through all five stops.
A Realistic Loop for This Weekend
If you're planning a Saturday or Sunday around this corridor before the fall waterfall season resets everything, here's what actually works right now:
- Book your Uvas Canyon day-use pass in advance through gooutsideandplay.org or by calling (408) 355-2201, even if you're going on a weekday. Skipping this step means turning around at the gate.
- Go early. The Waterfall Loop is shaded and cool even in low water, and starting before 10 a.m. means you beat both the heat and the narrow-road traffic through Sveadal.
- Treat the hike as the appetizer, not the main event, until the rains come back in a few months.
- Loop back through San Martin for the afternoon. Most tasting rooms here keep limited hours, often Friday through Sunday, so check ahead. Friday afternoons tend to be quieter than Saturday, with more attention from the staff pouring your flight.
- If you'd rather not drive between stops, the Morgan Hill Wine Trolley runs weekends year-round and rotates through wineries across Morgan Hill, San Martin, and Gilroy for $149 per person, which covers a box lunch and tastings at three stops.
The Real Point
The reservation system at Uvas Canyon exists because of a very specific problem: too many cars chasing too few parking spots during a handful of dramatic rain-soaked weekends. That problem is real, and the fix makes sense in February. In August, the same rule is quietly protecting an empty trail and a dry creek bed, which tells you something useful about how these systems work once they're in place. They rarely shrink back down to fit the smaller problem.
The upside for anyone living in San Martin is that the drive out to Croy Road was never really about the destination at the far end. The more interesting stretch of road is the one that starts and ends closer to home, past the vineyards most people drive by without stopping.
If you're curious what else is happening in this pocket of South Santa Clara County, or you're weighing whether San Martin's mix of rural land and small-town wine culture fits what you're looking for long term, Erica Trinchero has spent years working this exact stretch of road and is always happy to talk through what makes it tick.
