On a visit to Pasadena in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt said the Arroyo Seco would make "one of the world's greatest parks." Larger than Central Park by over 100 acres, and one of the oldest continuous footpaths used by the Tonga peoples for thousands of years. Barbara and I followed only part of the 26 miles of Arroyo Seco trails today and we pretty much agreed with Teddy. We've done several hikes in the section we hiked today including a 6.6 mile trek on our Week 17 in September of 2017. Today's hike was short and entertaining. We started at the parking lot on the east side of Washington Blvd and Rosemont Ave, across the street from the Brookside Golf Course north of the Rose Bowl. Instead of crossing to the golf course as expected, the map led us up a narrow trail along a steep hill looking down on the course and across the canyon for a distant view of the canyon hills. Less than a quarter mile up, another trail took us down to street level, then across Rosemont where we picked up the Horseback Riding and Hiking Trail into the woods paralleling the E.O. Nay Course, the shorter of Brookside's two courses that runs on the north end of the complex. We soon broke away from the golfers as we headed toward the 201 overpass, the first section of the 210 that started construction in 1958 from the eastern end of Foothill and crossing the Arroyo Seco near Devil's Gate Dam, and opened in 1966. Just outside the overpass we came to what looked like a circus training setup or a really fun and really high swing and trapeze set up. Had to look that one up—turned out to be a rig the power company set up to measure and prevent oversized equipment from entering the area. I guess the swings were just for fun? Next stop for us, a tricky rock hop over a stream passing under the overpass. As usual we searched upstream for a narrower rock passage, found one, but had to crawl under bushes to get back to the trail. But! Did not get our shoes and socks wet. On the other side of the overpass and the top of our trail loop, the back side of the hike took us on the west side of the golf course on completely charming trail through tunnels of trees and hillsides, in some parts, covered with tumbling flowers. The trail let us out at Rosemont Avenue bordering the other Brookside golf course, the C.W. Koiner Course, opened in 1928 between us and the Rose Bowl, a National Historic Landmark and California Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, opened in 1922. Pretty flowers, funny golfers, good tree tunnels, and stream hopping. We had fun! 

Good trivia: the first game played at the Rose Bowl? October 28, 1922. CAL defeated USC, 12–0.