Grover Beach, CA Outdoor Activities
Recommended Outdoor Activities by Groupon Customers
All 78 acres of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden are bursting with life. More than 1,000 species of native Californian plants and regional flora line its 5.5 miles of serene, public trails, allowing visitors to witness the overwhelming diversity of the Pacific coastline's plant life. Along with stands of oaks and riparian woodlands, botanical collections inhabit precisely arranged landscapes, echoing the founders' goal from 1926 to create a garden that would "unite the aesthetic, educational and scientific." In 2003, Santa Barbara County rewarded the garden's decades of cultural and scientific contributions, granting County Historic Landmark status to 23 of the acres.
The garden's specimens and displays exist just as much for education as they do for appreciation. Guests can gather landscaping ideas from the Home Demonstration Garden, a cottage surrounded with water-conserving plants. The Japanese Teahouse and Demonstration Garden melds traditional East Asian design with California-native flora. Throughout the grounds, tour guides dispense invaluable information on the displays and the retired tree nymphs that tend them. Additionally, scientific researchers use the facilities in their efforts to both study and conserve numerous rare and endangered species.
At Santa Barbara Seals Surf School, a Surfing USA accredited program, instructors teach the art of wave riding during private lessons, after school classes, and 10-week camps. Lessons can mix practice on land with time in the water, and cover a wide range of skills, from mounting a board to catching a wave without yelling “Hey, wait!” During camps, beginners spend most of their time learning to ride waves, while more advanced students also travel to select surf spots, and even get a chance to tour the famous Sex Wax factory and visit local board shapers to learn about the history of the surf industry in Santa Barbara.
Crouched behind a broken-down truck, the player hears incoming paintballs smack all over the automobile. Scanning the field, he plots his next move—possibly to the field’s upturned section of corrugated tubing, a large cable spool, or the makeshift plywood blockade. The outdoor fields at River Park Paintball challenge teams to work together through this dilapidated yet sneakily helpful terrain, which evokes the same kind of urban-warfare setting of popular video games. In other areas, stretches of field give players tall, speedball-style inflatable barricades that offer cover from incoming shots. Paintball enthusiasts make up the staff that oversees the fields at all times, ensuring players adhere to safe play and honor house rules, such as washing up before the traditional midday tea and scones. River Park's team requires that players make reservations, as the facility keeps limited hours Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
From the highest point of Adventures Out West's Colorado Springs trail rides, riders on horseback have a view of not just one mountain range, but three. Since giving their first tour in 1973, the guides of Adventures Out West have created many such scenic jaunts through Colorado and Arizona that deposit participants directly into the most beautiful parts of the local geography. Whether soaring over snowcapped mountains from the basket of a hot-air balloon or fly-fishing in the South Platte River, patrons get a chance to interact firsthand with all of nature's local sights, sounds, and whoopee-cushion gags.
Recommended by Frommer's travel guide, Unicorn Balloon Company leads guided excursions through the aerial spectacles of the Sonoran Desert's landscapes and environs. Smoothly ascending sunrise and sunset tours provide an easygoing and elevated trip through the panoramic desert and mountain terrain, which includes resilient flora such as saguaro cacti, palo verde trees, and distant mountain ranges assembled by packs of Paleolithic tailgaters. The wicker baskets float above vegetation and discreetly hover over animal habitats, with occasional views of coyotes, jackrabbits, desert mule deer, and javelinas. Each 100-foot balloon drifts at heights from just above treetop levels to 3,000 feet above the ground, carefully following wind currents to prevent turbulence and stay on the scent trail of musky airplane pilots.
Twin Lakes Golf Course is much more than the sum of its parts. With a 9-hole, par 28 executive golf course and practice facilities that include a driving range, 8,500-square-foot putting green, and chipping area, it gives players countless ways to better their game. Visiting players can hone short, half-swing approaches and full, walloping drives on holes ranging from as close as 70 yards to as far as 360, much as they would on a full-length course. The driving range also expedites the learning curve with full-flight Pinnacle range balls primed and ready to be pummeled from real grass or synthetic tees. In the short-game area, Titleist Pro V1 golf balls simplify the act of chipping onto the green or into target nets, even as players line up shots from nearby bunkers, slopes, and grasses akin to the rough and fairway. And when players are left with nothing else to do but admire themselves in the reflection of the nearest water hazard, Twin Lakes’ resident instructors—Don Parsons, Buff Platt, and PGA head professional Jim Ley—are there to take the reins and help clients shave off a few more strokes.
