TipRoast
The years teach much which the days never know.
We hiked the Ventura Botanical Gardens today - it was free on New Year's, so we took advantage of that to drive down. Ventura is about 90 minutes south of us.
It was a very windy day and not a good day for photography, so the pictures below are from the Internet.
It's 1.25 miles of switchbacks from the parking lot to the highest parts of the garden, and maybe 500 to 750 feet of elevation gain. The park contains a lot of flora from many areas of the world: in addition to native California species, there are also areas devoted to plants from Chile, Cape Town, South Australia, and the Mediterranean Basin. The plants from South Africa were the most spectacular at this time of year.
Once you get up a little ways and are facing west, you can see the Channel Islands (on a clear day). We could barely make them out today.
A good way to describe the park is that it's a sculpture garden without the sculpture. Lots of stonework: walls, benches, and rocks, with engravings from poets and naturalists and songwriters. My favorite had this quote from John Muir: "Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."
Our plan is to do at least one hike every month in 2023 - it's not really a New Year's Resolution, it's more an aspiration. And a hike doesn't have to be so grueling that it has a person begging for mercy from the Goddess of Agonizing Blisters - it can be something like what we did today.
It was a very windy day and not a good day for photography, so the pictures below are from the Internet.
It's 1.25 miles of switchbacks from the parking lot to the highest parts of the garden, and maybe 500 to 750 feet of elevation gain. The park contains a lot of flora from many areas of the world: in addition to native California species, there are also areas devoted to plants from Chile, Cape Town, South Australia, and the Mediterranean Basin. The plants from South Africa were the most spectacular at this time of year.
Once you get up a little ways and are facing west, you can see the Channel Islands (on a clear day). We could barely make them out today.
A good way to describe the park is that it's a sculpture garden without the sculpture. Lots of stonework: walls, benches, and rocks, with engravings from poets and naturalists and songwriters. My favorite had this quote from John Muir: "Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."
Our plan is to do at least one hike every month in 2023 - it's not really a New Year's Resolution, it's more an aspiration. And a hike doesn't have to be so grueling that it has a person begging for mercy from the Goddess of Agonizing Blisters - it can be something like what we did today.
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