Visiting Stanford University with Little Kids

We spent a few hours visiting the Stanford University Campus on our road trip from Santa Rosa in Northern California down to San Diego.  It is a beautiful and expansive college campus, with giant green lawns and wooded spaces, and the most impressive buildings and architecture.  It felt almost rural, in a world of its own, but it is just next door to Menlo Park and Palo Alto.

We parked in a visitor parking garage and started our meandering nearby at the Rodin Sculpture Garden on Roth Way. We packed a picnic lunch for the day and this outdoor sculpture garden turned out to be a perfect spot with lots of seating nooks under beautiful trees with wide hanging branches.

We made our way through the Stanford Oval and into the Main Quad. We giggled with how incredibly and face-smackingly beautiful the campus and all the buildings are. The architecture and curved archways covering the walkways around the buildings were very impressive. I couldn’t get enough of them. I have dreams to build our family home and would love to incorporate archways like these oneday into our dream home.

 It felt like an inspiring and studious place to be, both with institutions and structures that are detailed, meticulously cared for and well thought out as well as open green lawns and natural feeling wooded spaces. It seemed like all of these things would be really conducive to studying, learning, listening and discussing.

It had the same feeling as many of the incredible college campuses in the Northeast, but with a California vibe, with more warm tones in the buildings and even in the redish color of the dirt. I really enjoyed seeing just a peek of what Stanford is like. I had a lot of fun envisioning what life would have been like if I had gone to a school like Stanford on the west coast. While we were there the kids loved exploring too, running down the covered archways, digging in dirt, picking up sticks and being dwarfed by the buildings around them. I remember that feeling when I was young – being in a huge space and running around like I owned the place... It was a great stop on our four day trip down the coast.

Things to Do:

• Rodin Sculpture Garden
• Stanford Oval
• Main Quad
• Picnic Lunch
• Campus Tour: I'm sure it'd be great to take a formal campus tour, but it didn't fit into our schedule.