Descanso Gardens - Enchanted Forest Jan 2017

Descanso Gardens in La Cañada Flintridge, CA had and "Enchanted Forest" event this past Christmas season.  I visited for my birthday.  This event took place at night and featured different parts of their botanical gardens lit up with all kinds of different lights and sounds.  Some of the exhibits were interactive, such as two large "lily pad ponds" made up of large plastic circles that changed colors when you stepped on them.   

I'm not going to explain everything, just take a look at these pictures and know it was all much more impressive in real life!

Adventure Quest #2 - Aquarium of the Pacific

Adventure Quest #2

Aquarium of the Pacific - Long Beach CA - 5 Stars

Last weekend I visited the Aquarium of the Pacific if you count Sea World this is the 2nd aquarium I've visited in California thus far. I arrived rather late in the afternoon and had about 2 hours to look around before they closed.  There were so many exhibits I was not able to see them all before they closed for the night. 

I consider this a top notch aquarium primarily because they had many tanks with living coral.  Out of the other 3 aquariums I've visited in recent memory only one of those, the one at the Henry Doorly zoo in Nebraska, had living coral.  The Aquarium of the Pacific had much more coral than any of the others I've seen thus far.  Live coral is a huge plus for me because sometimes you get to see cool interactions between the fish and coral.

It also makes the tanks look a lot cooler and more natural than having that fake plastic coral all over. 

 

This aquarium also had some very unique sea creatures I've never seen in real life before.  This was super exiting because I've visited aquariums and zoos all over the country my entire life, and sometimes it can be difficult to find an aquarium that has something I've never seen before.

They also had some outdoor tanks with sea lions, penguins, and sting rays and sharks.  I didn't get a chance to visit their shark tank, but the others were underwhelming compared to Sea World.  So if you're looking for fun touch tanks/larger sea creature tanks stick with Sea world for that.  Since that was not what I cared about this didn't bother me in the least and I just breezed by this section. 

The primary attraction was currently their jelly fish collection.  I was highly impressed by the variety of jelly fish they had.  Previously I have only seen jellies at the Henry Doorly zoo in the Omaha Nebraska zoo.  They have some very nice jelly tanks there but they only have two or three varieties and tanks.  The Aquarium of the Pacific on the other hand had many different types of jellies and they had them in different three stages of their life cycle.  I found the polyp and ephyra stages to be super cool.  The ephyra stage in particular was super neat because if you look at the tank from the distance it appears to be water with just a bunch of particles floating around, but when you take a look very closely you can see thousands of the tiniest jellies swimming around.  They were adorable because they seemed swimming around frantically and full of energy unlike the adults that always seem so calm and peaceful just drifting along. 

To my delight they even had these little bioluminescent guys (Cydippida) that I've only ever seen in nature videos.  Seeing them in real life was brilliant.  They produce a very wide range of colors and their light patterns seemed almost endless in variety.  They were a true delight to see. 

Overall I highly recommend visiting this aquarium.  

I give this adventure 5 out 5 stars.

A few Pics from E3 2015

Adventure Quest #1 - Back Bay View Park

In an effort to see more of California I've decided to start going on some Adventure Quests.  I may share some of these adventures with you lovely folks. 

Adventure Quest #1

Back Bay View Park - Newport Beach CA - 2 Stars

Today I visited Back Bay View Park.  I was intrigued by this park because of it's close proximity to the water and thought it would have some good views.  To my disappointment this park is incredibly small and doesn't even have it's own parking lot.  I parked in the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort parking lot which is free for 30 minutes, but then goes up to $8 for the first hour then up from there depending on how long you stay.

I took the trail up to the top of the hill overlooking the bay.

As you can see there is a decent RV camping lot and some kind of cool looking water obstacle course plus the resort with a pool.  On the west side of the bay, not visible in this picture, there was tent camping on the beach as well.

I only spent an hour at this park, but it probably could have been walked in less than 30 minutes.  Here is a view of the park:

Most of the path is paved which is nice for biking or walking, but it's really too small of park for much.  There were two picnic tables and a few benches, but no shade.  So visit on a cool day if plan on picnicking here.

All of the plants looked like natural California scrub brush type plants, as I like to call them, and some cactus.

There were few flowers, some beetles, lizards, bees, and mourning doves.

If you visit this area you may want to skip this park and plan on spending some time along the bay itself at the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort.  They had a playground right on the beach, with a roped off swimming area.  No lifeguard though, but the water was super calm anyway.  I also spotted some food trucks near the northern end of the parking lot.

I give this adventure 2 stars out of 5.