On the edge of a residential neighborhood in Bellevue, Washington (the ancestral lands of the Coast Salish, Duwamish, and Stillaguamish People), is a beautiful park with serval creeks, hiking trails, and even a public farm!
Our family visited Kelsey Creek Park and Farm on 12/4/21. We wanted to get out to explore somewhere new, but we got off to a late start and knew we needed to go somewhere close to home so we weren't out on the trail in the dark.
Required Passes & Parking
Kelsey Creek Park is a City of Bellevue Park, meaning NO PASS REQUIRED!! There is a decent size, paved parking lot with about three rows of parking spaces. We went on a sunny, but cold day and there were only about 10 cars in the parking lot. I imagine this area may fill up in the summer or when the farm is doing events (though there is a lot specifically for farm activity participants).
Kelsey Creek Farm
From the parking lot you can enter the park by the path near the map, leading to the farm, or crossing over the bridge, leading to hiking trails.
We decided to start with the farm. It was the "surprise" of the trip for our daughter. We walked through a picnic area, past flush toilets, and crossed the road to the farm. This area was all paved, or tightly packed gravel. It was easily stroller friendly.
Kelsey Creek Farm is a historic farm site, that is now publicly owned. There are often events at the farm that you can register for through the City of Bellevue. You can also do what we did, just stop by and visit the animals daily from 9AM-3PM.
The animals were a surprise for my daughter, but I was actually surprised at how many animals they actually had at the farm. There were sheep, goats (that came right up to us and let us pet them), chickens, ducks, rabbits, cattle, and ponies.
Kelsey Creek Park Hiking Trails
From the farm area, we followed a gravel path to the hiking trails. My daughter happily skipped along toward the trails as we looked at the rest of the animals (this is where the ponies where).
The actual trail starts off with a long boardwalk bridge over the park’s namesake, Kelsey Creek. The best part of walking over this bridge was looking at all the trees that were chewed up by beavers (some even looked super recent). We stayed on the bridge for awhile to see if we could spot a beaver, but unfortunately there weren’t any out.
*Note- Once you cross the bridge the trail is not stroller friendly, unless you have a jogger and someone to help bring the stroller down a bunch of stairs.
From the bridge we went right and completed the loop trail counterclockwise. Either way you go will have some elevation gain, but it is nothing too strenuous. We crossed several small boardwalk bridges which are always fun for the kids.
At one point along the trail we even found our son’s first geocache! There was another one further along in the trail, but I was unable to help look for it because my tiny friend decided he wanted to nurse. So we gave up on that one and made a plan to come back another day to look for it.
As we made our way up the trail we listened to streams trickle near by, we saw ferns growing beautifully on trees, and we hunted for mushrooms. The best part was that we had it all essentially to ourselves, as we only saw maybe five other people.
Just as we were reaching the peak of the elevation gain we saw a sign warning of dive bombing owls. That didn’t sound fun, so we picked up our speed to get off that section of the trail.
Eventually, we reached some stairs, we could go up and connect to another trail, or down and make our way back to the car. We did the latter. The picture below is from the bottom of the stairs on the way back to the trailhead.
Our little man couldn’t hang the entire hike. Daddy lulled him to sleep as we made our way back over the main bridge to the trailhead. From the top of a small hill, we saw our car and I knew we went on a winning hike when upon seeing the car my daughter said, “Awww man, I wasn’t ready to leave.”
Overall, we hiked approximately 1.5 miles, including walking around the farm section. Kelsey Creek Park is now one of my newest favorite urban areas!
About PNW Mom
Hi! I am Heather, a mom to young kids that love exploring. I write about the kid friendly trails I hike with my kids and how to make those hikes engaging and tolerable. I also post itineraries for the trips we go on, showing what is doable with young kiddos. I spend my days researching the next place to explore with my babies and I hope my blog helps you get out into the wilderness with your young ones too!
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