Tag: travel

Moorten Botanical Garden

~ Spence's Girl ~ Leave a comment

Always up for anything garden-related, my visit to this Palm Springs botanical garden was an opportunity to see more Cacti varieties than I knew existed.

Established in Palm Springs since 1938, this privately-owned arboretum was created to share the beauty and extraordinary varieties of desert plants with everyone who visits. The featured desert trees, plants, and cacti come from around the world and range in size from miniature to giants!

The Moortens are desert plant specialists and invite you to their residence estate. Moorten Botanical Garden is a living museum of desert lore and has something of interest for everyone with glistening crystals, colorful rocks, ancient fossils, and pioneer and gold mining relics.

The classic collections on display are comprised of more than 3000 varieties of plants designed in concentrated habitats along a nature trail. In the world’s first Cactarium (a word coined by The Moortens), visitors will discover a special exhibition of rare plants seen nowhere else.

This content is courtesy of: http://www.moortenbotanicalgarden.com

Faye Sarkowsky Sculpture Garden in Palm Desert

~ Spence's Girl ~ Leave a comment

One afternoon my sister and I headed out to explore this sculpture garden. It exceeded our expectations natural beauty in a peaceful setting – plants, trees, water features, rock formations and of course the sculptures. It was the definition of Zen.

My favorite sculpture “Walks Among the Stars” is worth photographing from several angles.

Joshua Tree National Park

~ Spence's Girl ~ 2 Comments

I had a special afternoon enjoying one of our beautiful national parks this week. Staying in Palm Desert, Joshua Tree National Park was about an hour’s drive and such an incredible place to visit. With so much in the news regarding the administration’s disruption to our national parks it felt especially poignant spending time there.

Our national parks are a treasure and should be protected and valued.

West to East Caribbean on the Sun Princess

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I recently completed another cruise, this time two weeks on the newest ship in the Princess fleet, the Sun Princess. It’s a beautiful ship and is massive in size. Lots of walking onboard and off ship at several new ports plus revisiting St Thomas. Here are some of my favorite photos from sailing out of Ft Lauderdale to Mahogany Bay in Honduras, to Cozumel, Puerto Rico and St Thomas. More posts will follow, stay tuned.

Box Studio – outside Santa Fe

~ Spence's Girl ~ 2 Comments

When traveling to Santa Fe from Albuquerque, my friend Cindy said “why don’t we take back roads?” as our rental wouldn’t be available until 4 p.m..

This was brilliant and reminiscent of the best road trips I took over many years with Spence. He preferred going off highways, discovering places we would otherwise miss. In taking the back roads we discovered Box Studio. We actually passed it, looked at each other – simultaneously and enthusiastically saying “turn around!” When we did we saw only some of this magical place – they had closed for the day ten minutes before. We took a few photos but noticed they were open Monday-Friday from 9:00-2:00 and done for the season on November 1st. It’s close to Santa Fe so we made a plan to come back.

It was so much more than we could’ve guessed from the roadside. Called Origami in the Garden, this place is a sculpture garden wonderland on private property where the owners live and create. The show travels (in part) to other venues around the country. Each sculpture is first created with paper in origami taking a year to bring it to completion in their studio. It was very zen when walking amongst these artistic and lovely pieces with the brilliant blue sky as a backdrop. I couldn’t stop smiling throughout our hike.

There is a well-received documentary about Box Studio called Origami in the Garden, it’s available on Netflix. Should you find yourself near Santa Fe, make stopping here a priority.