Over the years, a small garden space south of The New Children’s Museum in downtown San Diego has undergone several transformations. Early this morning, during a walk down the Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade, I noticed it is now called Iipay Nyechewuuw, or Our People’s Garden.
A sign near the wooden planter boxes explains that Our People’s Garden was inspired by the Barona Indian Charter School’s Native Plant Garden, and the Barona Cultural Center + Museum’s Native Plant Seed Library.
The garden is now used by the nearby children’s museum to teach kids about the environment and Kumeyaay culture. The Kumeyaay have traditionally used native plants in our region as food, tools and medicine.
I noticed bits of art scattered about, evidently painted by young hands. I added contrast to my photograph of the sign so it can be more easily read.
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Beside the San Dieguito Lagoon wetland, near the west end of the San Dieguito River Park, you’ll find a beautiful outdoor space where one can learn about nature and soak in its goodness.
The shady, airy Birdwing Open Air Classroom was dedicated in 2014. It does indeed look a bit like a bird’s wing in flight!
Birdwing may be used as a trailside classroom by teachers, scientists and park rangers. It is also a place for walkers and hikers to relax and gaze out the nearby lagoon.
A short looping path and bridge near the structure passes through yellow bush sunflowers and other native plants. From that path I observed an osprey flying high in the sky–too small for a sharp photograph with my little camera.
The Birdwing Open Air Classroom can be accessed from the Coast to Crest Trail perhaps a quarter mile east of San Andres Drive and the ranger station.
You can learn more about the Birdwing Open Air Classroom here.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Hundreds of Girl Scouts from around San Diego gathered in Balboa Park this morning to take part in the Incredible Race!
Many stations were set up around the park: along El Prado, in front of museums, even in the parking area behind the San Diego Automotive Museum. Girls were being challenged to explore STEM, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
During the Incredible Race, teams would solve riddles and proceed station to station where fun, educational hands-on activities awaited.
As I walked through the park, I saw a lot of excited young people running energetically about, enjoying San Diego’s beautiful crown jewel and learning lots of cool stuff, too!
The San Diego Model Railroad Museum demonstrates how to plan and build a model railroad.Emily Warren Roebling was an engineer who oversaw the construction and completion of the Brooklyn Bridge.A table with activities near the Fleet Science Center.Learning about constellations and Women in Astronomy.In front of the Museum of Us, Girl Scouts could learn about Women in Math.At the Casa del Prado, one could make binary bracelets and learn about Women in Computer Science.By the San Diego Natural History Museum, there was a fun dinosaur fossil digging activity and information about Women in Paleontology.On the platform under the Moreton Bay Fig, curious Girl Scouts learned about electrical circuits and Women in Engineering.Above beautiful Palm Canyon, a station recognized historically important Women in Photography.Behind the San Diego Automotive Museum, participants could change a tire on a cool race car!At the San Diego Air and Space Museum, Women in Flight were recognized, including Anne Lindbergh, the first woman in the United States to earn a glider’s pilot license. She made her first flight in San Diego, at Mount Soledad in 1930.Girl Scouts could make their own gliders!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Nearly a hundred new hands were “learning the ropes” on San Diego’s historic tall ship Star of India today!
During my visit to the Maritime Museum of San Diego, I asked what all those folks on the deck were up to. I was told they’re learning all about sailing a tall ship. It was the first day of the Sail Training 101 class that is held every year.
There’s a ton to learn–can you imagine? Different masts, yards, sails, all those different ropes and cables, different knots, the jargon–all of it crucial in the sailing of a ship. (I’m a museum member and avid reader of nautical fiction, and I still become confused by much of it!)
Many of these new volunteer crew members, once trained, will be sailing several of the Maritime Museum’s tall ships, including Californian and San Salvador. This coming November the Star of India will sail with those other two ships out onto the Pacific Ocean!
In one upcoming photo, someone down in the Star of India’s hold is raising a heavy bucket full of rocks. That’s practice for hauling on a line–a very common activity on a tall ship!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
As I walked through the award-winning Inez Grant Parker Memorial Rose Garden, I saw enthusiastic volunteers who are dedicated to gardening and beauty. And I was grateful to them.
A couple of experts told me no other rose garden in San Diego can compare with our treasured one in Balboa Park.
If you want to help maintain Balboa Park’s incomparable rose garden, check out the next photo, or click that first link!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Why was there a Sumatran tiger skull outside in Balboa Park today?
Because the skull’s flesh had been devoured by a mass of skin beetles. And those beetles (and their very hungry larvae) would be a nuisance if they escaped indoors!
Scientists from the nearby San Diego Natural History Museum were carefully preparing the Sumatran tiger skull for their collection!
The museum’s Birds and Mammals Department already contains tens of thousands of specimens. I was told preserved specimens, including this tiger skull, are very useful when it comes to comparative anatomy.
I’ve learned that Birds and Mammals Department curator Philip Unitt is the author of The Birds of San Diego County, which happens to be on my bookshelf! (It should be on yours, too.)
I noticed another critter in a nearby container waiting for the skin beetle (Dermestidae) treatment. A gray fox that was road kill in La Jolla would provide dinner for the beetles next!
Funny. I was visiting Balboa Park to check out the ongoing preparations for December Nights. Which just goes to show–you never know what you’ll discover when walking through this amazing park!
The San Diego Natural History Museum, like many other Balboa Park museums, will be open free to the public during December Nights!
Here’s the beetles’ next meal: a gray fox…
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
It’s easy to explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag. There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
This week a very cool educational event is being held at the Comic-Con Museum that should interest Comic-Con attendees and residents of San Diego alike.
Today through Sunday–throughout Comic-Con week–a group of Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassadors are at the museum encouraging STEAM learning! Particularly for young women!
The event features computer scientists and environmentalists and paleontologists and astrophysicists . . . even an astronaut! Visitors both young and old (like me) can create, experiment, play games, and talk to professional woman who are leaders in their fields.
I walked around the museum’s COX Innovation Lab looking at table displays, impressed by all that I saw. I even got to watch how to make a quasi-comet!
One cool display was about how life might have evolved on the fictional planets of Star Wars. Comparisons are made between often bizarre creatures and the organisms in our own Earth’s fossil record.
Inspirational talks are held down in the museum’s auditorium, but I arrived a little too early, so I missed that. But they will be held all week.
To learn more about this awesome event, click here!
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Explosive reactions! A gigantic walking virus! Snakes, molecules, robots and rockets!
Oh, wow! Check out the fun that families and kids enjoyed today during the Barrio Logan STEAM Block Party, part of this year’s very cool San Diego Festival of Science and Engineering!
There was much to see, do and learn in the outdoor plaza of Mercado del Barrio!
The event featured immensely entertaining live science demonstrations, creative kids activities, and even a bunch of awesome lowriders on display! I was personally pleased to see the substantial community involvement by UC San Diego.
Look at the great event attendance!There’s plenty of science and technology to learn from lowriders–especially the hydraulics!Check out this awesome lowrider!Everywhere I turned, people were engaged in hands-on learning at this Barrio Logan Science and Art Expo! Young Women in Bio.
I saw a demo of the above very cool science video game Microscopya, designed by Dr. Beata Mierzwa, an artist and UCSD molecular biologist! Students learn about cells and human biology while having tons of adventurous fun! Check out the web page here!
Friendly folks from the San Diego Public Library!The ladies of Mad Science make a memorable demonstration using carbon dioxide.That is planet Earth’s size relative to Jupiter!Free Trees for your neighborhood!
If you live in San Diego, and want to plant a free street tree where you live, check this out!
EcoVivarium brought snakes, tortoises and other critters for the educational event.A scientific experiment in progress.Concentrating on science.Two very impressive young men give a presentation concerning groundwater.Look at all the drones!That’s the biggest virus I’ve ever seen! I didn’t bring enough hand sanitizer.That’s either goop or slime.A smile!The Vulcan-1 rocket, built by students at UC San Diego. It’s the world’s first undergraduate rocket powered by a 3D printed engine!What’s the space weather today?The science of tortillas!Even very young kids were interested and excited!STEAM related artwork by local students decorates the event stage.A hand crank powers different light bulbs.A fun demonstration of various physics principles by folks from General Atomics.Yes, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen is -196 degrees celsius! Brrr!What happened?Hair-raising fun!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Wow! Have you seen the huge mural that was recently painted on the side of the Escondido Public Library, facing the new mini park?
I heard about it and had to go see for myself!
The amazing mural, presented by the Escondido Library Foundation and the City of Escondido, is titled Escondido’s Vision. It was painted by Julia Anthony in late 2021, and officially dedicated, along with the new park, last month.
The bright, super colorful artwork depicts a beautiful day in Escondido, through the prism of imagination. It’s a broad landscape where the sun shines, reading is fun, the future is hopeful, and life is good!
I took a variety of photographs at different distances…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Last Saturday I enjoyed a tour inside the new Design and Innovation Building at UC San Diego. The special tour, part of the San Diego Architectural Foundation’s annual Open House event, was one of many opportunities for the public to go “behind the scenes” at fascinating places around the city.
The Design and Innovation Building opened late last year. This great article describes the building as “A place where disruptive ideas come together to spark learning, technology, collaboration and new ventures.”
Inside the building it feels very spacious. Hallways are lined with large inside windows, allowing one to see activity in classrooms and labs and practically everywhere you turn. From the third floor you can look up through part of the ceiling to see the fourth floor. Even during the tour when the building was quiet, I had the feeling that I was moving freely through an incredible, connected, creative space.
The floors, from first to fourth, are called: The Basement, Maker Space, The Design Lab and the Entrepreneurship Center. Our student tour guide described how ideas proceed upward through the building, forming in The Basement, undergoing design and testing in the Maker Space, then rising to the Entrepreneurship Center where products can be brought to market. The Design Lab is where “faculty from the arts, humanities, engineering and the sciences join forces to solve complex issues related to education, health, mobility, communication and urban planning.”
The building will eventually include a good old restaurant on the first floor, but above all it was designed to inspire innovation.
I was excited to discover a museum-like room on the fourth floor of the building, with a gallery full of inventions! The exhibit is titled Patent Models: A Celebration of American Invention. It was so cool, I think I’ll post a separate blog concerning it!
Now, to give you a taste of what our tour group saw, on with the photos…
Looking into a classroom on the first floor of the Design and Innovation Building.Bits of stimulating art on the first floor.Looking down from the second floor.A room where there are seminars open to the public. At the conclusion of the building tour, our group heard a talk here about the selection of San Diego-Tijuana as 2024 World Design Capital.We walk out onto the second floor terrace, with great views across UCSD, including the nearby trolley station.Walking through the Maker Space on the second floor.Display includes rapid prototyping.I took this quick pic as we moved along.Windows into the future.A metalworking shop, if I recall correctly.Tables where people with unique ideas can freely interact.Gazing up from the third to the fourth floor.One fascinating room at the Design Lab: Speculative Ecology and Bioarchitecture.A room on the fourth floor where students can speak to entrepreneurs.Social Contract on a fourth floor wall. I am joining an inclusive, collaborative community of partners. Together we will extend and expand the innovation economy in San Diego…Nearby post-it dreams. Seeing beyond the horizon…Curating your knowledge and influence to create or envision something new…Solve problem in a new way…Opportunity and solutions with flare…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Cool San Diego Sights! 