After a couple of days at Disneyland, we headed to Santa Barbara for a couple nights. This is because I really want to go see the huge monarch butterfly migration in Mexico, but we couldn’t afford that right now, so then my mom discovered that there was a small one in Santa Barbara.
We first got to do a little hike through this beautiful wooded park. We loved it! We even had a little adventure of having to take our shoes off to cross over some water. Once we got to the top of a hill there were eucalyptus trees filled with butterflies! Not the billions like in Mexico, but there were still hundreds! It was incredible! Important to mention that these are monarch butterflies and the park is just outside Santa Barbara in a place called Goleta, which just happens to be where I lived for a year as a child while my dad furthered his education. During that year of my childhood, I often found and collected caterpillars that hatched into monarchs. We didn’t know at the time that we were in a migration location for them! So cool to go back, knowing that now.
They were everywhere and the kids got to catch them on their fingers and hands. Here is a little something that I wrote about the experience: The trees were fat with clumps of huddled butterflies; the branches of the eucalyptus seemed to sag with their collective weight. In a moment of pure wonder, a group of them flew off all together at once, their wings a sudden hum of fluttering songs. They are so gentle, so delicate- the earth cradles them and we, the blundering humans, walk softly, a whisper on our lips, our eyes heavenward, our fingers outstretched, a hopeful perch for their little souls.
Seeing a bunch of them fly off together at the same time was truly magical!
After that we walked out of the forests and found ourselves by the ocean! On top of beautiful cliffs. It was so beautiful and the kids loved it! We got to roam around and we continued the little hike. Earth is so amazing.
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