Happy 10th Anniversary Gilroy Gardens!

What a party! In celebrating their 10 year anniversary, Gilroy Gardens opened its doors to all Gilroy residents--with your golden ticket (that came with a Gilroy City utility bill) and proof of residency, you and three other guests could get into the park for free. How could you pass that up?! (Online you would pay $29.99 for a single day admission.) We saw so many people from the community; it was like a big Gilroy City Party!

For those of you who have never been to Gilroy Gardens, I would love to introduce it to you! Gilroy Gardens was the dream child of Michael and Claudia Bonfante. After selling their Nob Hill Foods supermarkets, they used the profits to create a horticulture theme park they called Bonfante Gardens. The Gardens opened its doors in June of 2001. Later, in March of 2007, the park was renamed to Gilroy Gardens. Nestled in the western rolling hills of Gilroy, all of the Park’s rides, attractions, and food courts are built around elegantly designed gardens and beautiful waterways.

Among the magical attractions of the park are the unique Circus Trees—nineteen of them can be found though out the park. These trees were originally created by the late Axel Erlandson who used intricate grafting techniques to weave the tree branches into living pieces of art. Michael Bonfante rescued these trees from Scotts Valley, California, after they had been neglected following

Mr. Erlandson's death.

Here is a great example of a Circus Tree called the"Basket Tree". This tree is actually six Sycamores grafted together in 42 different connections to give it its basket shape.

Below are three more Circus Trees.

For more information and a video about these amazing Circus Trees, go to: Circus Trees - Bonfante Gardens Videos P. Allen Smith Garden Home
Below are more sights you can see throughout the park.

If you look closely below, you can see the Swan Paddle Boats in the background.

Quicksilver Express Mine Coaster (below)--is just one of the rides at Gilroy Gardens. If you look closely, my hubby is in the back, with his hands in the air (click photo to enlarge).

It was a hot day yesterday, my daughter and her friends were thrilled to go running through the Bonfante Falls to cool off.
Below you can see the Mushroom Swing Ride in the background with the Rainbow Garden Round Boat Ride in the foreground.
More sights of the park.

What a great day of friends and celebration. A heartfelt thanks to Michael and Claudia Bonfante for making their vision a reality, one which all of us here in Gilroy can love and enjoy. I hope the park stays open for many more years to come—and that someday I can bring my grandchildren here! Happy 10th Anniversary Gilroy Gardens!

For more information about Gilroy Gardens, go to:
http://www.gilroygardens.org/about.html

A Perfect Day for the Beach!

How better to celebrate the last day of winter than to spend it at the beach? The kids didn’t have school last Friday because of “Staff Development Day,” whatever the heck that means! Maybe the teachers were tired and needed a break from our kids?! Anyway, the weather was the warmest it has been all winter—seventy-eight degrees when we left home—a wonderful way for Old Man Winter to say goodbye! We celebrated by taking a road trip along California Highway 1, following along the Pacific Coast from Half Moon Bay to Watsonville, and stopping at beaches along the way. Since the coast is just one continuous beach, you might think all the beaches would look alike, but they don’t. Each beach is unique in its own way. Here is a sampling of our day (click to enlarge photos.)

First stop was beautiful Half Moon Bay, which is 25 miles south of San Francisco. The above photo was taken there. The kids loved it here, and were disappointed that we weren't staying the day.

We couldn't believe how close the surfers were to the sandy beach. Seemed like you may end up sharing your beach chair with one of them if they weren't careful!




The side of the highway was speckled with beautiful wildflowers.




The next beach we stopped at was San Gregorio. This beach had a river winding through it as well as interesting cliff formations and caves. The kids loved exploring this eclectic beach.

The kids were getting a bit sad at this point, I think they would have preferred to go to just one beach and spend the day in a sun-sand bliss. But not today, off to our next short stop at Pomponio Beach (below).

After that quick stop, we jumped in the car and continued heading south. We couldn't stop at every beach; there just wasn't time left in the day. We were very pleased with the treasure we found at our next stop: Pescadero Beach (below). Nope, those aren't a bunch of rocks sitting on top of a larger rock, they're harbor seals. They were as curious of us, as we were of them.

There was some confusion as to what the next beach was called, so I will let you look at the sign a decide yourself! And no, this is not the infamous Pebble Beach by Carmel. This beach was rocky and parts of it seemed to be made of an unusual bubbly-looking sandstone. The waves were huge here, as they dashed upon the rocks.

The next stop was to view Pigeon Point Lighthouse, 20 miles south of where we started at Half Moon Bay. This is one of the tallest lighthouses in America and has been guiding mariners since 1872.

Ahhh, there were more places we would love to have stopped before we called it a day, but we had a mutiny on our hands—the kids were starving for dinner. So, no more photos of the beaches—our last stop was at Santa Cruz Boardwalk for dinner.

Thanks for sharing our day with us! I can't say which beach was my favorite, they were all so magical. What a perfect day :-) !

My Review of the movie Alice in Wonderland

One of our favorite family activities is a night at the movies. And of course, as our daughter says, a movie isn't a movie without a bag of popcorn! Last night we took the kids to see the Disney Movie Alice in Wonderland. I have really been looking forward to seeing this movie, and I really did want to like it, but I left the theatre feeling sadly unfulfilled. As you can well imagine, this was a far cry from the Disney Alice in Wonderland cartoon my son and daughter watched as children, but then can you expect anything less than “DARK” from the movie director Tim Burton? The scenery was visually stunning, but amidst all of the intricate costumes, fairy tale makeup, and magical CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery), the story seemed lost in translation. I couldn’t understand three-fourths of the nonsensical mumbo-jumbo the characters said (especially Johnny Depp). And, the movie didn’t take advantage of being in 3-D as it could have--as much as the movie Avatar, (but hey, it is hard for any 3-D movie to be compared to Avatar!)

On a positive note, I did find the CGI enlarged Mad Hatter’s eyes hypnotizing as well as the enlarged Red Queen’s head amusing. Johnny Depp’s visual appearance as the Mad Hatter stole the show, with Tim Burton’s wife (Helena Bonham Carter) playing the Red Queen running a close second.

I found myself not really caring what happened to Alice in this movie. I wasn’t drawn in by her character (played by Mia Wasikowska)—and echo the words said by a few different characters in the movie, “She isn’t the real Alice!”

Although the movie was a visual journey and fairly entertaining, I admit, the unclear development of the story and its limp conclusion left me unsatisfied. As the movie came to an end, I also wanted to yell the Red Queens infamous words (she said every time she didn’t like something), “Off with their heads!”

Video of the Mad Tea Party from Disney's movei Alice in Wonderland: