TRAVEL. FOOD. DESIGN. ThereGoesSaraRose.com
It was late August 2024 when I found myself wandering through Balboa Park — one of those aimless, golden-hour afternoons that happen when your plane doesn’t leave for several more hours and your brain finally gets permission to breathe.
The sun was sliding behind the Botanical Building, casting a soft glow across a lily-covered pool. Somewhere beyond the plaza, a soundcheck drifted through the arches — The Doors, then Pink Floyd, echoing from the Spreckels Organ Pavilion like a memory waking up. It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t a performance. It was just enough to stop me mid-step.
I didn’t go to Balboa Park with intention, or an itinerary, or even the thought that this moment would matter. But looking back now — over a year later, after finding peace in quiet truths — I realize this was one of the moments that stayed with me. A memory from the “in-between year” that knew it belonged to a future version of myself.
Because the best travel moments don’t announce themselves.
They find you.
They ask you to be still.
Exploring Balboa Park
For those who haven’t wandered its pathways yet, Balboa Park is San Diego’s 1,200-acre cultural heart — a sprawling network of gardens, trails, museums, historic architecture, and performance spaces just north of downtown. Home to 18 museums, the San Diego Zoo, the Starlight Bowl Amphitheater, miles of walkable promenades, and more than a dozen curated gardens, the park is designed for slow exploration. You can browse world-class art, watch a rehearsal drift from an open-air stage, grab something delicious from The Prado, or simply follow whatever path the day hands you. If you want to plan your own visit, the official park website offers maps, current exhibits, and accessibility details: balboapark.org.
Layers Upon Layers
Even in 2024, when I wasn’t posting much, the park felt like a reminder of how much a single place can hold. Balboa Park hums with layers. Spanish Colonial façades wrap around art galleries. Desert gardens unfold near koi ponds. Palm trees brush the sky beside Moorish columns. It’s not one story; it’s dozens of them stacked and shifting as you walk. Free art museums sit unassuming yet host paintings I’d only ever seen before in history books.
Those few hours, I drifted through all of it, just soaking in the atmosphere. I wandered the Prado walkways and explored the botanical gardens. I enjoyed the sun-warmed alcoves between the San Diego Museum of Art and the Mingei. There was art everywhere — much of it protected, all of it deserving to be seen in person. Screens flatten what the world intends to be dimensional.
And maybe that’s why this moment returns to me now.
Because presence — real, grounded, unforced presence — is becoming the center of everything I create. Some things can be shared, the importance the history – but to be changed one must experience it for themselves. I can only relay how these places in California have changed me. You must decide to get up and be changed yourself.
The Quiet Year
I wrote in my Point Lobos post about the quiet season I stepped into. It included graduate school, new work, and new rhythms. There were also inner shifts that don’t happen on a public timeline. That year wasn’t loud, but it was formative.
Travel has always been how I process the world and myself. But in 2024, something shifted. I began thinking not just about experiencing moments like this. I also considered designing experiences that help others learn. These experiences help others reflect and explore.
That’s what led me deeper into instructional design.
That’s what led me to graduate school.
And ultimately, that’s what led me to begin writing a book.
Building Something New
For the last year, I’ve been deep in a Master’s program in Instructional Science & Technology — work that’s reshaped how I see places like Balboa Park. Travel isn’t just movement; it’s experiential learning. It’s design in the wild. And the more I studied how people learn, the more I wanted to help others create experiences that feel just as intentional and human.
That’s why I’m writing The Instructional Designers’ Field Guide — a practical, research-informed handbook for anyone building courses, trainings, or online learning environments. Whether you arrived in this field on purpose or by accident (like so many of us do), this guide is meant to feel like a compass: clear, friendly, and grounded in real practice. It’s for the curious, the career-switchers, and the quietly ambitious creators who want their work to actually make a difference.
This guide is for you if you’re stepping into online learning, just like this blog is for you if you enjoy experiential learning, second-hand. It is also for those entering course development, accessibility, or training design. This is especially true if you come from a nontraditional path. It’s built for the curious, the quietly ambitious, the people who want to create meaningful learning experiences that feel human.
And it turns out that travel, food, and design all belong in the same story:
- Travel is experiential learning.
- Food is sensory storytelling.
- Design is how we shape the way others move through knowledge, places, and moments.
Balboa Park reminded me that those threads were always connected.
What’s Ahead
ThereGoesSaraRose.com is growing into what it has always been:
a space where Travel, Food, and Design intersect.
Here, you’ll find:
✨ stories from the road — past and present
✨ the ways culture and creativity show up in unexpected corners
✨ behind-the-scenes looks at my graduate work and book development
✨ instructional design insights grounded in real lived experience
✨ reflections on curiosity, reinvention, and building a life you want to stand inside
I’m still Sara Rose.
Still going places.
Still learning, still designing, still following the small moments that light up the path forward.
Just bringing a few new tools along for the ride.
Join the Story!
Have you explored Balboa Park or a place that surprised you in a similar way? Tell me what stayed with you. I love hearing about the moments that change someone’s journey. Until next week’s blog, make sure to take some time to enjoy a special bit of Travel, Food, and Design!
