Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

Coppertone and I decided to start out our week-long vacation in Santa Barbara at the botanic garden.  Situated in the hills above the city, the garden provides views stretching from the mountains to the north to the Channel Islands offshore to the south.

The staff are friendly and helpful.  They can suggest routes to hike the main points in the garden and provide some background on the plants that grow here.  The garden is broken up into segments representing different environments such as Desert, Meadow, Wooded Dell and Canyon.  The garden is the first in North America to focus exclusively on native plants.

We're not sure exactly how many miles of trails there are here.  There are loads of side trails and loops that meander off of the garden's main paths.  It would be tough to ensure you walked each and every possible trail segment, though wandering is part of the fun here.

Many of the paths are paved.  Those that aren't are typically easy crushed granite or well compacted dirt.

On of the areas highlighted by a greeter at the entrance was the backcountry "off-leash" childrens' area.  At first, that sounded dreadful to us.  But our midweek visit meant there were not too many people and even fewer kids.  It turned out to be a good decision to check out the area.  The trails are great and the child friendly features were a great hit with us both.  We walked through the hedge maze, climbed the castle, did the small ropes course and more.  We didn't feel like kids again, but it was close.

Dropping by in October, we missed the main blooming season.  So we did not see a riot of color we might expect see at other times of the year.  Nevertheless, there were a few bloomers still on display and the greenery itself was also soothing.

We managed almost 3 miles before calling it quits, but not because we ran out of trail segments to walk.  There was much more.  Rather, it was getting to be lunch time and we were hungry.