Tilden

Friday of last week I was feeling brave.  By brave I mean I was willing to drive in the Berkeley Hills to get to Tilden Regional Park.  I don't like heights, steep curvy roads, or not really knowing where I'm going.  Why I thought this outing was a good idea I don't know since it threw all those fears into one basket.  I do know that when I have a wave of "lets go do this" -ness, I just go with it.  Lots of adventures happen this way, and fears are overcome, and comfort zones widen.  Friday proved to be no different. 

What you see in the below picture is the Botanical Garden.   It's huge, and beautiful, and the kids loved it! They took their time exploring in there for over an hour and read nearly every label of every plant.  The first batch of pictures below are all from the garden-

 Lots of Redwoods

After the garden, we headed out on our hike.  We hiked through the woods down to Lake Anza, around the lake, and back up to the Anza building where we had parked.  This next batch is from the hike-

 

 

 After we made our way back to the car, we headed out to find a picnic spot.  Along South Park Drive there is a series of picnic areas, so we just drove until we saw a spot that looked cozy, and then had a nice picnic!

That was our cozy picnic table. We had a great day, totally relaxed and wandering.  I originally had no intention of going to the garden, but the kids really loved it in there, so we lingered for a long time.   The hike down to the lake resulted in us going back the next afternoon w/Brian for some fishing and more relaxation (no fish), and another picnic.  It was a great hike, and I can see running up there once school starts....in 2 days.  But the day was not over.....at 9 that night we headed out with the kids on another hike so that they could test out their new head lamps!  My next post will have pictures from that outing.