It's a nice cool day today, so Fred and I have gone to get some breakfast at the IHOP over on Mockingbird and then make a visit to the Arboretum, before going to Ron Mathis's house for dinner.
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. Which way you go depends on traffic, but, since we were coming from the Original Pancake House on Northwest Highway, we could take that right across town and come into the Arboretum from the same direction as from Mockingbird.
White Rock Lake is where one of the long bike trails is, and we have biked around it numerous times.
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.
Our Visit Today
Today's visit isn't going to be extensive, so I won't bother with a map of the gardens and try to show you where the few pictures that we took today were actually shot. No, I'll just tell you a little bit about what we did, and let you look at the various floral pictures that we acquired.
We parked and walked to the main entrance, and paused at
the waterfall across from the entrance.
Then we showed our memberships and went on it. Our first stop was the
Visitor Center,
where there are always lots of interesting displays that fit the season. We also visited the central lawn where there were quite a few picnickers, and we walked along
the walkway around the lawn.
There is a new section of the Women's Garden and a
new walk lined with crepe myrtles.
In addition to these stops, we also went to many of our favorite places, but just didn't take many pictures. I have put thumbnails below for the best of the floral pictures that Fred and I took; you can see the full-size images by clicking on those thumbnails:
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(Click on Thumbnails to View) |
It's October, and that means the annual pumpkin display is in full swing, and that was our last stop of the day. The Arboretum not only gathers all the pumpkins together as a display, but also sells them. I've put thumbnails below for the three best pictures we took while here at the pumpkin patch, and you can click on them to see the full-size images:
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(Click on Thumbnails to View) |
It was a nice, but short, visit to the Dallas Arboretum.
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October 19-24, 2003: A Trip to Pittsburgh |
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August 26, 2003: Prudence's Birthday Party in San Antonio |
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Return to Index for 2003 |
