11 Happy Hollow Ln, Menlo Park, CA 94025

Tucked between a busy traffic corridor on Alpine Road on the one side and San Francisquito Creek and the Stanford Golf Course on the other, Stanford Weekend Acres is easy to miss. Some seven short streets make up the San Mateo County neighborhood, but in many ways they feel independent of each other. Mary Blazensky and her husband live around the corner, and "stumbled" on the neighborhood 18 years ago. They soon discovered how special the location is, so close to the Piers Lane entrance to the Stanford Dish. She notes that most of the people living on her street are older, or working, so her kids don't have many playmates in the immediate vicinity. She mentions one family she knows who lives a couple of blocks away on Homer Lane, a cul de sac where hippies flocked in the 1960s, and author Ken Kesey once lived. Mrs. Blazensky describes the current residents as "a retro group who love their little tiny cottages and do communal laundry like in Guerneville." Mosaic pottery and a vintage washer decorate some front lawns, giving the street a somewhat funky appearance. Every Fourth of July the neighbors band together for a block party, and in between, they keep up an active e-mail correspondence. Jean Harman says living a couple of streets away on Stowe Lane, she feels a world apart from Homer Lane and the rest of the community. "We step out our gate onto the golf course and we're near nothing, that's why we like it," says Ms. Harman. She finds the view relaxing, and the setting nice and quiet, except for the occasional raccoon or skunk. Ms. Harman says some very young children live down the street, but her observation is more professional people are moving in these days, looking for starter homes.