El Dorado Nature Center

Out of the goodness of my heart, (And out my reluctance to part with my hard earned dollars in order to get to a far away trail) I decided to give the trails of Long Beach one more chance. And I'm so glad I did.

My friend Evan, a Long Beach native, told me I should check out El Dorado Nature Center because it makes you feel "like you're not even in Long Beach anymore." After last week's failure of a trail, that sounded good to me.

The nature center is located at 7550 E Spring St. in Long Beach, CA. If you drive, like we did, then it's $5 for parking. But it's free if you walk or bike there. (And they have bike racks right by the trail head.)

The nature center's website described it as "a little bit of nature in the middle of the city," and it's fitting. The center is over a 100 acres and offers two miles of dirt trails and 1/4 mile of a paved trail.

We were adventurous and chose the 2 mile trail, but before we started we got a glimpse of the cutest part of the nature center.

Turtles!

There were so many adorable little turtles, they even had their own sun roof.

They were so still that at first we thought they were turtle statues.

Turtles make excellent models. They all started swimming towards me when I was taking photos. Squirrels, however must think I'm the paparazzi because they wanted nothing to do with me. Ducks fall somewhere in the middle.

Just a friendly reminder.

All the wildlife really made this trail extra enjoyable. The gorgeous views didn't hurt either.

That's Jared. I don't creep on other hikers with my camera, I swear.

I thought the entire trail trail was completely flat, so I got really excited when we came across this.

A hill! Yay!

It wasn't a super gnarly hill, but I welcomed the incline that upgraded our walk to an actual hike. The trail also featured lots of benches to sit down in case you needed a rest.

These rules made sense, but this one didn't.

I only jogged once, when I was trying to catch a photos of some ducks. (Who promptly started swimming in the other direction when they saw me.) Luckily the jogging police didn't catch me.

Overall, we really likes this trail. And there was only one point where we could see and hear the city that surrounded us. We will definitely come back.

Happy Hikers

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