Heritage House, Riverside Airport, UCR Botanic Gardens, Benedict Castle

I'm working on a website, so I went to a couple places today to take pics. First we went to the Heritage House, which is on Magnolia. It's free admission and is one of the oldest landmarks in Riverside. Unfortunately we found out that it's closed in July and August. :( It's still really pretty to look at from the outside. We're going to go back when it opens again to see the inside and see what it's really about.

Next we went to the Riverside Airport... just because we could. I've lived in Riverside my whole life and have never even attempted to go there because I figured that there really wasn't anything there. It wasn't like LAX or the other big airports at all. There is an old WW2 plane (I think) that was pretty cool to look at. It was closed when we went, but apparently when they're open you can go in the hangar and everything. We decided to eat lunch there since we found out that they have a diner we never even knew about. The food there was very affordable and really good. From inside the diner you can see the Cesna's taking off or you can sit outside and get a better view. Inside the diner there are model airplanes hanging everywhere and pictures of different aircraft on the walls. It's a really good place to just have a relaxing lunch. After lunch we went up to the patio and watched a couple of the planes- including an impressive private jet -take off from the runway.

After leaving the airport we headed to the UCR Botanic Gardens. These are really beautiful. There's open grassy areas, a rose garden, a koi pond and many other beautiful areas. It's a very peaceful place to spend a Saturday afternoon.

On our way back we passed the Benedict Castle. Apparently this is not open to the public, but the people there are extremely nice. They do a tour of the Castle, and you can book events here. The grounds are beautiful. They showed us around to the fountain, the chapel, and showed us the view of a Cross at the top of a ravine that is illuminated by different colored lights at night.

Overall today was very enlightening. I've lived in Riverside my whole life and have never seen any of these places. It's amazing what you can miss when you take things for granted.