Final day accomplished.

I'll be posting my adventures out of sequence but will date them in sequence, if that makes any sense.
I was able to get to the Rhododendron Garden, it was glorious, the weather cooperated but it was still a bit nippy in the shade of all the trees. The colors of the flowers were spectacular! I got to see some unusual plants in their bonsai collection and the conservatory... a cymbidium orchid, and some other 'unusual' plants, as well as a bonsai schefflera and bougainvillea
The only downside to the garden is the location, it is within hearing of the freeway so not too secluded. Still was in the middle of a huge forest on land owned by Weyerhauser, yes the lumber corporation.
The colors! OMG  I really need to move further north where I can grow rhodies and more azaleas and peonies. Yeah we have bougainvillea.. and jacaranda trees.. and palm trees, and... yeah. Even urban areas had more life to them than similar areas in San Diego.
But let me show you what the garden looked like.

The parking lot is actually part of the Weyerhauser complex so you have to walk a forested path to the actual garden. We got there a bit early so Devon sat in the car and I got out to take pictures of the trees and sign there. These two photos are out of sequence because the sign is in the parking lot and the entrance is at the actual garden entrance and shop.

 It was a combined garden with a bonsai display on the right of the entrance and the rest of the walking garden with all those paths. The forest area reminded me a lot of the Santa Cruz mountain area. Instead of redwoods they were douglas fir, cedar and noble fir with moss covered branches and bark.

A tiny wren of some sort had just hopped from branch to branch in this tree, using it like a scaffolding

First of many gorgeous flowers on the path.

I took almost 100 pictures of just this garden. Yeah it was like that. I have discovered I'm a shutterbug like my dad was and don't have a problem with it. I wanted to capture every beautiful flower and tree to remember it and my experiences.
So my future posts are going to be sporadic as it's a chore to upload pictures to this blog and actually get some writing done.
The one place I could have taken pictures of, I didn't actually want to. Devon showed me a marshland park area near the ferry landing on the mainland called Ferrell Marsh Park. It was a lush and quiet deep forest kind of area, I felt like if I had taken a picture it would ruin the spirit of the place. 
Sigh.
More pictures and postings later. Time to insert back into the real world and try to keep my calm and forest images through the day.