Today I drove 114.2 miles traveling from Culver City, California to Brea, California.
I am spending the night at the Embassy Suites in Brea, California.
I have a special corner suite with one king bed.
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A blessed Good Friday to you all, Traffic on the freeway was lighter than usual as I headed out this morning. I headed north on the 405 and got off at Mulholland Drive and crossed town on it while stopping at some of the scenic overlooks. The road is featured in a significant number of movies, songs, and novels. Academy Award-winning actor Jack Nicholson has resided at Mulholland Drive for many years and still lives there today.  Below is the Universal City Overlook from Mulholland Drive. Weather was perfect again today but there was a tad bit of haze this morning which interfered with my photo.  The Mulholland Hollywood Bowl Overlook was closed. That's the one I wanted to see. Next it was on in to Pasadena, where I spent most of the day. My first stop was at the Rose Bowl. That's a statue of Jackie Robinson in front of the stadium. Quite fitting as today is Jackie Robinson Day.  Brandi Chastain's iconic Women's World Cup moment is immortalized with a statue outside the Rose Bowl.  From the Rose Bowl I drove into the center of town and visited City Hall. It is quite an impressive Building.  Below is looking back on City Hall from the pretty plaza across the street.  There is a monument to Jackie Robinson and Mack Robinson just behind City Hall. Mack was a track and field athlete best known for winning a silver medal in the 1936 Summer Olympics. He was also Jackie's older brother.  You might be thinking how was I able to spend an entire day in Pasadena. The answer is the Huntington Botanical Gardens. And I was not the only one. They have a parking lot the size of Disney World's, and it was full. They were parking us along the drive into the lot and I got the next to last spot. The gardens are massive. I must have put ten miles on my scooter on my visit here today. My first garden was the Desert Garden. It is one of the largest outdoor collections of cacti and succulents in the world, the Desert Garden includes more than 5,000 species of desert plants in sixty landscaped beds.  I have quite a dilemma here. I took hundreds of pictures of this beautiful place and it is difficult to decide what pictures to share.  The garden has a high density of plants. Because deserts get so little rain, plants tend to grow far apart. However, in the Desert Garden, gardeners have developed an irrigation (watering) system to ensure the plants can get the water they need while growing close together.  The flowering cacti below were very interesting.  The Huntington Desert Garden is one of the largest and oldest assemblages of cacti and other succulents in the world. Over 100 years old.  One of the most beloved and iconic landscapes on the grounds, the historic Japanese Garden features a distinctive moon bridge, Japanese house, Zen garden, bonsai court, and a ceremonial teahouse and tea garden.  The Chinese Garden features a stunning lake, graceful pavilions, teahouse and tea shop, stone bridges and waterfalls set against a wooded backdrop of mature oaks and pines.  The three-acre Rose Garden contains more than 3,000 individual plants and more than 1,200 different cultivated varieties.  Yesterday's Rose Garden at Exposition Park was just a warm up for today's grandeur.  There is a lot of other stuff here at the Huntington. Art Gallery and numerous libraries and halls.  If you'd like to see more of the gardens I have a "few" more pictures I can share with you.  I think the picture below may be my favorite picture that I have ever taken. Simply stunning.  I visited the garden's web site to get some information for this email and I noticed several things I did not see. The place is huge with paths going everywhere. It's hard to see everything.  Needless to say I enjoyed the Huntington Gardens very much, but after several hours there I headed back to my car which was about a mile away. Now I had about a 35 mile drive to my hotel and the freeway out of Pasadena was a parking lot and stayed that way for 16 miles until I changed freeways and things finally started to move. I'm spending tonight at an Embassy Suites in Brea, California. I have an absolutely enormous room.  I've started my trek back home. 77 miles done today and about 2100 more to go. After settling in to my hotel I retrieved my dinner from a Cheesecake Factory at the adjacent mall. I got the Chicken & Biscuits and of course some cheesecake for dessert.  And with that I will close today's email. Tim |
Covers 114.2 miles from Culver City, California to Brea, California.. |
Click on the arrow above for tomorrow's adventures.
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