Some friends took me to visit The Arboretum, in Arcadia, California. Located on 127 acres, The Arboretum is a tranquil botanical garden and historical site.
We saw lots of birds there too, including geese, ducks, and peacocks. This one bird was perched on a branch above the water and sat there for minutes with its wings spread out, looking at you with one eye – kind of creepy. An informed source tells me that this was a double-crested cormorant. Here’s a pic of him (the bird, not the informed source):
While the many plant varieties are winding paths are reason enough to visit, movie-hounds may find it interesting to investigate where some of the many movies and tv shows were filmed on the grounds.
Johnny Weissmuller swam in Baldwin Lake for decades as Tarzan:
A local news story reported that he, in fact, set an unrecorded Olympic swim record when a cage of crocodiles was accidentally opened during filming (Weissmuller beat the crocs to the lake shore).
Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour were here for the Road to Singapore in 1939. Douglas Fairbanks was here for Safari also in 1939.
Perhaps most interesting is that the long-running tv show Fantasy Island was filmed here in the 1970s, and the Queen Anne Cottage, built in 1885, served as the tv show’s manor house. In fact, you can see the spire of the cottage just over the shoulder of Herve Villechaize in the First Season DVD cover.
Here is a picture of the same spire that I took today:
Alas, I looked for de plane, de plane, but couldn’t find it.