Lake Ilsanjo, Annadel State Park


I happened to be in Santa Rosa and had few hours of free time. Hence, I looked around to see where my son and I could hike. Google showed that Annadel State park was nearby. We decided to give the place a vist. The park has many trails and loops. We decided to do combination of loop trail for Lake Ilsanjo.

While entering the park we saw a parking lot where lot of cars were parked, and we also parked our car there. The actual entrance of the park was about half mile from there. We realized that most of bicyclists park their cars there and cycle around the park. At the park entrance, we checked out a map and decided our route. We started with Channel trail at the trailhead. This trail goes alongside the road. After we 0.3 miles the trail turns right and starts a gradual ascent. After another 0.7 miles, the path forks, where we decided to take a left on the North Burma trail. On this trail we saw many live oaks, black oaks, and madrones. Around the end of the Burma trail, we saw a big grassland meadow. Throughout the trail, we had to be wary of the cyclists on the trail- there were a lot of them and they like to go fast. We took a shortcut to the lake and turned right on the Louis trail. After that, we got the  first glimpse of the lake on the right.  We came across to a crossing point where numerous trails meet. Since we wanted to loop the lake, we continued straight on Canyon trail till we hit the dam. On the way to the dam, we saw a beautiful and nonchalant deer. At the dam, we took a break. We walked a while on the inclined wall of the dam along the water.


It was very interesting to know the story behind the  name of the lake. This land was originally owned by a businessman whose name was Joe Coney and and had a wife named Ilsa. They built the dam on in 1950s before handing the land to the state. The lake was named after Coney's wife.



From there onwards, we decided to return to the trailhead. On way back, we took the Live Oaks traill which eventually meets the Channel trail. The return journey was much through the open compared to the shaded part we walked through earlier. According to my NewYu, we finished the 6.2 miles train in just over 2.5 hours. The overall the elevation change during the trail was around 600 feet. It was a very comfortable and easy trek. 

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