Newport Beach's Back Bay

A couple weekends ago my fiancé and I went down to Newport Beach to check out what’s called “The Back Bay”. This area, as the name implies, is an inland waterway “in the back of” regular Newport Bay. It’s also known as Upper Newport Bay. It’s a great wildlife sanctuary for both water and land creatures. In spring and summer it is full of wildflowers. Most of the flowers I saw were yellow, which is my favorite color. They must have known I was coming.

There is a visitor’s center there called the Muth Interpretive Center. There they have information on the ecology of the area and maps of all the hiking trails. There are lots of great trails around the Back Bay area. Some are paved and are popular with cyclists and others are dirt but graded and wide. There are smaller trails leading off these main ones and these are great for exploring.

We took one of these smaller trails and it led us down by the water. I have to say that as pretty as the water is there, it smells bad. Actually let me correct that statement, it’s the mud there that smells bad. At first I thought my fiancé had eaten, uh, something that disagreed with him, but no it’s the mud. According to the information at the visitor’s center this is because the mud is decomposing which is apparently a good thing. Just to warn you though, the occasional whiff is a bit putrid.


While on this fun little stinky side trail we saw one of the coolest flowers I’ve ever seen. I actually thought it was fake until I noticed that there were a bunch of them. I thought, “Okay there’s no way someone stuck that many fake flowers down here so it must be real”. There’s a picture of it below. There were lots of cute little ground squirrels everywhere too and they looked like miniature kangaroos. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of those though so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

We concluded that Newport’s Back Bay is a great place to get out into some nature and go for a great hike. Next time I think I’ll take my bike and check out the scene from the bike paths. You could also take a boat or kayaks out on the water and see it that way. The only downer is that the flight path from John Wayne International Airport goes right overhead, so while it might look like you’re in nature, it don’t sound like you’re in nature.

For more information on Newport’s Back Bay area check out this website:

http://www.newportbay.org/