April 24, 1999: Lowery and Ron's Anniversary
March 6, 1999: Lowery Evans' Birthday
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April 4, 1999
A Visit to the Dallas Arboretum
 

This Sunday, Fred and I are taking my Mom on an outing to the Dallas Arboretum. Since she can't walk through the whole garden (at least not very fast), we are going to use one of the gardens' wheelchairs to push her around. It will go a lot faster for us, and I think she will enjoy it more as well.

 

Getting to the Dallas Arboretum


The Dallas Arboretum is not too far from where I live over on Inwood- I'd guess about six or seven miles as the crow flies (see the map opposite)- but you can't get there as the crow flies because White Rock Lake is in the way. So you can either go through town and wind your way around the south end of the lake or you can take Mockingbird over around the north side of the lake. Today, we just took Mockingbird over to Buckner Boulevard to Garland Road and the Arboretum.


In this closer view, you can see the south end of White Rock Lake and you can pick out the bike trail that hugs the lake shore almost all the way around. At the south end is White Rock Lake Dam and spillway, which takes the overflow water and sends it under Garland Road to continue on down to the Trinity River.

The bike path used to cross the top of the dam, but for one reason or another, the bike path was rerouted a year ago, and now it goes through some parkland and playing fields south of the dam, across the spillway, up Garland Road for a ways, and then back north along the lake shore.

You can also see a closer view of the Arboretum in this picture, and can begin to pick out some of the pathways through the gardens.


Finally, in this close-up of the Arboretum itself, you can see most of the major features- including the parking area just off Garland Road, the new administrative buildings, the restaurant and gift shop (all right near the parking lot) and, off in the middle of the gardens, the DeGolyer house (the former residence of the family that donated the land for the Arboretum to the Arboretum Society.

You can also see the maze of pathways that criss-cross the gardens.

Today wasn't a particularly long visit, although Dallas Blooms! is still going on. I think we spent a couple of hours there; any more, and I think my Mom would have gotten too tired.

When we come for long visits, and we take lots of pictures, I like to show a garden diagram and mark our path through the various garden areas. But with today being so short, we'll dispense with all that detail.

 

Walking Through the Dallas Arboretum

When we got to the gardens, my Mom thought she would rather walk along with us, so we did that for about an hour. Then, when she got a bit winded, I walked back to the entrance plaza and brought a wheelchair to her.


My Mom and I at the Azaleas

We first walked together around the main lawn, which is in the northwestern part of the garden. When we got back to the main walkway through the center of the gardens, that's when I got the chair for my Mom. We walked all the way to the Camp House and to the back of the garden to see the bronze animal sculptures (and took a picture of one of them). Here is a garden diagram; as you can see, we covered most of the garden:

We didn't take all that many pictures here today; we'd actually been here just a month ago with Brent. But we did take a few. Click on the thumbnail images below to have a look at them:

It was a nice visit to the gardens today, and I think my Mom enjoyed it a great deal.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

April 24, 1999: Lowery and Ron's Anniversary
March 6, 1999: Lowery Evans' Birthday
Return to the Index for 1999