Santa Barbara Botanic Garden

I love nature; the only reason I'm not out there all the time is because I strongly dislike insects and snakes, and California has plenty of both. While we were in Santa Barbara, we went to visit the Botanic Garden.

Truth be told, I did not expect the wilderness we found there, but it was a nice surprise. Santa Barbara Botanic Garden is made of 100% plants native to California and it's beautiful.

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Among all the plants, it has a small redwood forest, which was my favorite part of the garden, aside from the view you get as soon as you enter it. It mostly has dirt paths and of course, I was not prepared for that and the "hike" it entails. We planned to visit a few places that day so I chose to wear sandals (similar here) and a sundress (similar here, here and here) for comfort - yes, sandals for me equal comfort.

Since, as I mentioned above, we didn't expect this kind of wilderness, we didn't venture through the entire garden; for that, I recommend that you wear pants and comfortable, covered-toes shoes. We were advised that some dirt trails have poison oak and we did not want to run into that.

The views in the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden are incredible with mountain peaks ahead, greenery all around and birds chirping everywhere. I loved admiring the California wild poppies and all the other flowers growing freely as far as the eye can see. We made our way into the redwood forest where I was mesmerized by those amazingly tall trees, and the squirrels going about their business. Now I can't wait to visit the real Redwood National Park.

From that point, we made our way to the Mission creek, where we listened to the sounds of water and nature around us. We didn't venture further than the Children's maze, which, cowardly, I refused to "experience" due to being scared of insects. We returned to watch Cooper hawk's babies - they were sleeping while the mother or father were nowhere near. From there, we headed to the Porter trail that promises a view of the ocean and the islands off the California coast. Sadly, we didn't see any of those. For the days we were there, we weren't lucky enough to have fully clear views - blame it on SoCal's June gloom.

In spite of this, we still enjoyed our visit and the greenery, and we'd go back if were in the area.

If you ever are in Santa Barbara, I recommend you pay this beautiful place a visit; bring some food to enjoy in the picnic area, and observe the beauty around you.