It's Christmastime At The Gardens

 

We just renewed our Bok Tower Gardens membership so that we can enjoy another year of these beautiful gardens located 15 minutes from our home in Lake Wales, Florida.  And not only can we enjoy our local garden, as members we can take advantage of the reciprocal program that allows us free entrance to more than 300 gardens, aboreta and conservatories throughout the US.

We paid $75.00 for an annual membership for two.  Considering that it would cost us $15.00 each to spend the day at Bok Tower and we go on average of 1 - 2 times per week per year, it is an amazing bargain.  But we really got our money's worth when we used our membership to get into gardens in San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and Tennessee in February.

When my daughter, Lisa, told me she was going to Texas last month and that she had the San Antonio Botanical Garden on her itinerary, I bought her an annual membership (an early Christmas present) to Arlie Gardens in Wilmington, NC, her local garden.  She was able to use her pass to get into the Texas garden for free and then used her membership to get us free admission to the very popular Enchanted Arlie event at Arlie Gardens.  I couldn't get free admission to this event with my membership to Bok Tower since the reciprocal program only gives you free admission to special programs happening in the gardens you signed up with, but with Lisa's pass we were able to save the $30 a carload admission price.

These cute trees lip-synced favorite Christmas songs.

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Arlie Gardens - Part 2 - With The Grandkids (Nov. 2025)

This is the closest the Florida grandkids ever came to playing in the snow. The New York grandkids had a great time playing in the fake snow also.

The Singing Trees were one of the highlights of the night for the kids.

NY Big Brother and FL Big Sister loved the new alligator display.

FL Little Brother and NY Little Brother needed to get a closer view of the water fountain. I was holding my breath, waiting for one of them to fall in.

The NY brothers had lots of fun at Arlie as did the FL kids and all of us adults. The gardens put us all in a festive mood.

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Last Christmas, me and Soko finally got to go to the Peace on Earth holiday celebration at Bok Tower Gardens.  We had heard so much about it and know people who look forward to going every year.  One of the highlights of a visit to Bok Tower is the tour of the mansion located there but they definitely are not to be missed at Christmastime.  The rooms of the Pinewood Estate are festively decorated for Christmas by volunteers.  The decorations change every year so that you can be sure you will see something new each time you go.  

Unfortunately, Pinewood Estate is not open because of the pandemic this year so we feel very lucky to have gotten a chance to see the beautiful displays last year.  There is plenty of holiday joy around the gardens and of course the music of the carillon coming from the tower is always a treat so I am sure there will be plenty of visitors to Bok Tower as usual in spite of the estate being closed.

Note:  There is a separate fee for the Pinewoood Estate tour.  

Bok Tower

                         We found this cute display in Hammock Hollow, the children's garden at Bok.

Pinewood Estates Tour

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Lisa was lucky enough to visit two gardens this season with the second garden being Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC.  Their holiday event is called Night of a Thousand Candles.  Looking at the pictures Lisa's friend Kathy took made me want to visit this garden so badly but the tickets for the event are all sold out.  Guess I will have to wait until next year.

Note: Brookgreen Gardens are not participants in the reciprocal program.

We are hoping to get a chance to visit the Cape Fear Botanical Garden in Fayetteville, NC before they take down their festive displays and if we can get to more gardens this season that would be wonderful.  There is nothing like enjoying some holiday cheer at the most wonderful time of the year! 

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Happy Holidays from our home to yours!

Saguaro National Park, Tucson, Arizona

Read this post, before you go, if you are planning a trip or thinking about taking a trip to Tucson, Arizona to visit Saguaro National Park.

If you will be traveling in your car or RV to Saguaro, read this post Healthier Food And Snack Choices For Our Road Trips for snack ideas to take along on your drive.

Stop 5 of our 14 National Park in 5 States road trip (July-August 2025) brought us to Saguaro National Park in Arizona. We passed by the park's visitor's center on the way to the campground. We stopped in to get a map so we could get started on making plans for our time in Saguaro, which I found out is pronounced "Sah-wah-row" which sounds nothing like the way I had been pronouncing it.

Our first full day in Tucson was a Sunday so before we headed to the park we attended mass at San Xavier del Bac Mission. This beautiful Spanish Colonial style church was built in the 1700's and gets 200,000 visitors a year.

                                                                                

The building was so big on the outside that we expected to walk into a large church. We were surprised how small the actual church part of this building was. It was absolutely gorgeous but only held about 50 people maximum. We were glad we came a little early and were able to get a seat.

             

San Xavier del Bac Mission is worth a visit even if you are not in the area on a Sunday for the mass. You can tour the church and grounds and visit the small plaza that holds a couple of shops that sell crafts, souvenirs, religious articles and food.

After church we made our way to Saguaro National Park - West, Tucson Mountain District. It was a scorching 107 degrees on this day so the park rangers at the Red Hills Visitor Center were advising park goers not to go on the longer hikes.

The Valley View Trail was only 0.3 miles and gave us our first chance to get up close and personal with the saguaros. 

Saguaros are the largest cactus in the US. They grow very slowly and at 150 years old finally reach their full height. The tallest recorded saguaro was 78 feet tall.

We explored most of the park in our air-conditioned car on the unpaved 6 mile in and out scenic drive. At the 3 mile point of the drive, before the turnaround, was the Ez-King-In-Zin picnic area. We debated whether we wanted to climb the steep rock steps that lead to the picnic area at the top of the hill.

The view we had from the picnic area was well worth the climb to get to it. We were so glad we did it!

Saguaro National Park is split into two separate areas. We were conveniently camping right in between the two halves of the park and could get to both sides easily. On our last day in Tucson, we made our way to Saguaro National Park - East, Rincon Mountain District. We stopped in the Rincon Visitor Center to watch a film and learned more about the park.

We got to the park early so that we could enjoy it before it got really hot out. Most of our exploring would, once again, be from the inside of our car.

We ventured out of the car to read the interpretive signs at most of the several overlooks and to walk around one short nature trail along the 8 mile paved scenic drive loop.

We found that this side of the park was much more scenic than the east side but had a lot less saguaros.

The Saguaros we did find here were very impressive though.

We did one hike. It was the mile long Freeman Homestead Nature Trail. Most of the hike was very scenic. I realized I had left my water bottle in the car when we were well into the trail. Soko convinced me that the trail wouldn't take long to do since it was only a mile and that I would survive without my water.

We chose to do this trail because it said that we would "Wander down this path to the site of an old homestead..." and that sounded interesting and fun. When we got to the site we didn't see anything at all but after much searching, we found this little piece of foundation.

The trail just started to go downhill from here for me. The last 1/4 mile was just desert with nothing much to look at and I was dying of thirst. I began to feel like I was going to pass out and  thought that Soko would have to carry me back to the car.

I was so happy when we finally made it back to the car. After I drank a bottle of water in one gulp, I got my cooling wrap out of the cooler and wiped all the sweat of my entire body and felt much better! I highly recommend bringing a cooling wrap with you if you are planning to spend the day in a very hot desert. 

The Freeman Trail was the last stop on the scenic loop. We made it around the loop and did everything we wanted to do before it got dangerously hot out. We headed back to the campground. We had just gotten back to our trailer and were inside when we heard a loud bang and our whole RV shook. We thought for sure that an RV or car had crashed into us as they were pulling into the campground. We ran outside to check it out and didn't see any damage to our trailer. Soko saw this after he went out to investigate.

Luckily no one was hurt in the house where someone's gas oven exploded. 

We literally went out with a bang in Tucson, AZ lol!

                                              

Read these posts about other amazing National Parks.

Petrified Forest National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks

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Have you been to Saguaro National Park? Is it one of your favorites or is your favorite one of the other 63 National Parks? We would love to hear from you in comments.