Redwood Estates, Lexington Hills, CA

Redwood Estates is the Lexington Hills community with the most going on along its main road, tucked among redwoods beside State Route 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It has a post office and a store, and the trees grow right up to the front doors. This is a community that looks after its own roads. Residents belong to a nonprofit that maintains roughly eleven miles of private lanes, plus a swimming pool, two playgrounds and a community center called the Pavilion. Houses vary widely in age and style, so the streets never look uniform. The lanes are narrow and winding, curbs and sidewalks are mostly absent, and yards are more forest floor than lawn. For a walk, Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve is the nearest big open space, more than 1,400 acres run by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. A short, level trail rings Upper Lake, and longer routes climb through second-growth forest with a few old-growth survivors. Lexington Reservoir County Park, a 950-acre park around a lake, is a short drive toward Los Gatos and offers shoreline fishing, picnic spots and small-boat paddling. The Redwood Store on Broadway Road covers daily needs, with dairy, cured meats, local ice cream and a deep craft beer shelf, opening at nine. For a sit-down meal, Pizzeria Vittoria, also on Broadway Road, makes wood-fired pizza and barbecue and keeps a short beer and wine list. It closes on Mondays. Bigger errands head to Los Gatos or Scotts Valley, both reached by Highway 17, and a car handles nearly all of it. Nothing about a day here is spontaneous, because the errand list has to fit the trip down the hill. The catch is that one highway is the only way out. When traffic on 17 jams, the community is stuck with it. For many residents of Redwood Estates, sleeping under redwoods is worth that.