Thanks bearstate. This was a wonderful trip for me through your photos! Not having an artist eye, is the crucifix the reflection in the water that I see? That contorted tree is beautiful. I can almost hear the water from that waterfall. We also have a Japanese Garden here in the San Fernando Valley, but possibly not as big. Yet it's very relaxing to walk through it.

Thanks for sharing your photos with all of us.

Eloise,

That you found it relaxing to walk through a series of photos is good.

The crucifix is formed by the lighter areas of the photo contrasted against the darker. It runs from top to bottom and fully left to right with its axis just above and to the left of the rock lamp on the small island. The small fountain in the pond just beyond the bridge is at the axis. The horizontal bar runs through the walkway starting where the redwood tree trunk is, across the bridge and to the left. The vertical bar starts just adjacent to the left hand rail at the bottom of the photo and goes directly up. I did not plan to have it in the photo. I just noted it after reviewing the shots.

We went there years ago with our kids. It is nice to know that it's still there. So many things have changed over the years. We moved away from SJ in 1983 when things started to get just too crowed to be comfortable. I couldn't tolerate spending 45 min to drive 15 miles top work. I remember when we came to SJ in 1960. There were miles of orchards everywhere. The different cities had space between them.
Donna

Donna,

It's odd, but I remember traffic being the biggest head-ache about living in the South Bay and one reason I jumped at a job back on the east coast in New England. But I've been here now going on my first week and traffic has not been formidable. Of course, I have freedom of what hours I drive. But in truth, I've made up my mind that I'll tolerate the traffic for what the area has to offer and what I've always liked about the South Bay. It has great diversity, a dynamic success oriented population and a low crime rate. The diversity alone promotes great food, great culture, entertainment and tons of things to do, see and experience. I've never appreciated more than now what the area has to offer, now that I've been away for eight years and have found the last four especially, to be nothing but purgatory for me. I am so elated to be out of Bakersfield.

And I have friends here. It's about 1:00am Wednesday morning and I just got back from being out with a friend, celebrating my return to the South Bay. I haven't come home this late in years. No, we weren't out drinking. Just took in a movie - Jumpers. Wierd flick, possibly geared for a younger audience than 50 somethings, but kind of interesting. Driving up past Hakone Gardens to the Skyline was a treat yesterday. Next I'll have to take the 84 from Woodside over the crest on down through La Honda to the 1.

Heaven can be life.

Hey bearstate,

If you're going to move back to Northern Cal, you're going to have to start dropping "the" in front of highway numbers, it's a dead giveaway :-)

If you do take Woodside Road (aka "84") over the hill to 1, you should detour south about 4 miles on Skyline Drive (aka "35") to Yerba Buena Nursery, which has an amazing native plant demonstration garden.

Matt

I agree with you about the diversity there. I really missed all the wonderful restrants down there. The shopping up here when we first moved up was really bad. It has gotten better with time. I still miss going out to lunch with the gang from work. We tried a different type of food each week. It was so much fun. Before we moved, we had problems with vandles in our neighborhood. We would find all of our tires slashed or our house was egged. Our house was broken in three times. Up here, many people still leave their doors unlocked. We do go back to the Bay Area on occasion on field trips with our girls.

Matt,

I started using 'the' in front of highway numbers when I picked it up from my brother, who lived in Moreno Valley for a while. I really think it's a California idiom, not just SOCAL. I'll keep that nursery in mind when I do that trip over the Skyline to Pescadero and possible down to Santa Cruz for a return trip on the 17.

Donna,

Diversity is so much fun. Today, I think I'm going Italian ...

{{gwi:514063}}

Murphy's Square in Sunnyvale has got just about every kind of restaurant you can imagine and for unique Pizza, it's Gumba's! This is my first Gumbas Pizza in over eight years and yes indeed, it was good!

What part of town did you live in? The last time someone egged my car, it was my own personal stalker. Now that I'm back, I wonder if I should be looking out for her?

Welcome to my neck of the woods...Sunnyvale. Murphy Ave. is nice but tiny compared to the plethora of restaurants in Mountain View on Castro.

Looks like you put up enough pictures to get a pretty good idea of what the whole garden looks like. Bet that curving pedestal in the pond had a small lantern on it and somebody made off with it.

bboy,

You never know ... that curving pedestal does have a flat top and may have been used to support a stone lantern at one time. For now, it is an interesting shape that although not exactly similar to the rock to the right, is a suitable repeating element for a photo that utilizes the oscillation between the two for effect.

I have to say that this garden is very free from litter and damage, except for the wooden bridge which suffers from much carved in grafitti. Some young folks just have no concept of anything, but themselves. And it's worthless, because without a picture of themselves, their grafitti says nothing about themselves. It's just worthless scratches in the wood.