Travels ~ Olompali State Park and Other Places

A couple weeks ago, my Stepdad got "cabin fever" and wanted to go somewhere for the weekend. He decided that we'd go over to the Coast Guard Training Station near Petaluma, CA. My Stepdad is retired military, so with his (and my mom's ID cards) they can stay in guest housing at just about any military facility. The Petaluma Coast Guard training station is a beautiful place. Set in the hills west of town, it's got fantastic views from just about any of the buildings there. Among other things, they train the cooks!

Anyway, we couldn't check in to the rooms until after 5pm, so we did a little wandering around the area before heading up to the station. We found an interesting sounding State Park on the map, so we decided to go check it out. Olompali State Historic Park is a small park, right off Highway 101 between Novato and Petaluma. Getting there was a bit of a pain, because the access road is only available to Southbound traffic on 101, and naturally we were headed North on 101.. lol.. But, we managed to find a turnaround point and got into the park. It's a pretty area. Some really old buildings and such. They are short of funding, so very little of the place has been restored. Here's some pictures:

This was a mansion that was built next to and "around" the original adobe building on the site.

This is the visitor's center... One of the few buildings that have been restored so far.
Apparently way back when, the place had a beautiful formal garden. This picture is of the fountain that was in the middle of the gardens. As you wander through the area where the gardens were, you can see lots of plants that apparently were there back in the 1800's when the gardens were built. And this fountain was the centerpiece. Very unique looking and I can imagine what it looked like with the water spraying out of the pipes at the top..

More on our travels later... I do need to take care of a few things here.... :-)