Balboa Park GODventurez -- with CoolPix

Join me in a gad-about around Balboa Park -- San Diego's world-famous and popular every-day-of-the-week hangout for the young and the old and all the in-betweens; for the "native" San Diegan, as well as the "Zonies" from Arizona; and for all the other friendly and curious tourists from all corners of the globe.

Pepper Grove...picnic area and playground for young tots and not-so-young tots.

Be a kid-at-heart again...(the Natural History Museum in the background)

Take off your shoes and dive in...feet first, that is! (Fountain in front of the Reuben H. Fleet Museum)

El Prado...not so populated, for a change. But summer time's another story, as an army of tourists and locals congregate and stroll leisurely along this avenue to enjoy the sights and entertainment.

Kudos to all the gardeners who take such meticulous care of the grounds!

Mexican tamales, as well as Hawaiian shaved ice...where else but in this San Diego melting pot?

Many talented folks display and share their talents...and your donations are very welcome indeed! Beware of the Tarot and palm readers...but, hey, it's your money...even they have to eat.

Entrance to the Botanical Garden...(next blog will showcase its beauties)

Just floating...going with the flow. How many of us can do what these two kois do so effortlessly?

Inside the Botanical Garden...many of the visitors are so focused on all the brightly colored bromeliads and exotic orchid blooms, the many varieties of species of plants from all over the world, the special display of bug-eating pitcher plants -- they forget to look up, and they miss out on the giant ferns and the shadowed patterns from the see-through enclosure above.

Early Spring blooms, which fall down like snow flakes when the wind plucks them from their heights.

The romantic Rose Garden...in hiatus, waiting for Spring. Ecclesiastes 3:1 describes this scene perfectly -- To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. And GOD has promised resurrection for this barren garden...for He has made everything beautiful in its time. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Just next to the Rose Garden is the Cactus Garden...what a contrast! The roses are delicate and fragile, while the cactus blooms are other-worldly and "robust" in make-up.

When i wander around Balboa Park and discover something i've overlooked in past visits, or see a new bloom from an "old friend" -- i am filled with gratefulness that the awesome GOD who created the universe and all the countless galaxies and gazillion stars gave such meticulous care in populating our earth with such beautiful and varied GOD-stuff...flowers and plants and animals that only His infinite mind could devise and manifest.

Then GOD said, "Let the land burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant. And let there be trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. The seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came." And so it was.

The land was filled with seed-bearing plants and trees, and their seeds produced plants and trees of like kind. And GOD saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11-12, NLT)