Unchartered Territory.

Yesterday, the husband and I went for a late afternoon walk through Golden Gate Park (it was our compromise after I allowed him to waste half of our day eating pizza, watching football and napping...okay, maybe "waste" is the wrong word).

Golden Gate Park is one of my great respites in this fine City. If you don't know much about GGP, it's actually 20% bigger than Central Park and was completely man made, built on sand and shore dunes. Starting by Haight Ashbury, it spans over 3 miles and ends at the Pacific Ocean. Within its 1,000+ acres the park houses an endless array of things to see : the Japanese Tea Garden, bison (for real), an archery field, a golf course and frisbee golf course, a fly fishing pool, the DeYoung Museum, the new California Academy of Sciences, a windmill, Spreckels Lake, the AIDS Memorial Grove, a botanical garden, and the list goes on and on.

Every time I enter the park, I stumble upon something I never noticed before. Thanks to a post over at Design*Sponge a week ago, I learned about the Dahlia Dell. Chris and I made our way behind the Conservatory of Flowers to discover this test garden of hundreds of varieties of dahlias. The bevy of colors reminded me of the poppy field scene in the Wizard of Oz. It's simply magnificent. We were very lucky to see it before all of the blooms die. If you don't make it to see the flowers, here are some pics (as well as a pic of the nearby succulent garden).