Great photos, it is always interesting to see what others see (and wonder why you didn't see it).
I'm glad you were able to make it even though it is a bit of a drive for you. I hope you had the time to see more of the gardens and some of the exhibits. There are a number of CPer's in the San Diego area. We had one guy from SD at the April(?) meeting who used to work for California Carnivores. He had some incredible shots of Darlingtonia from lesser accessible areas - a small population with yellow hoods, and another (or perhaps it was the same - memory lacks) with enormous "tongues" over 2/3 the length of the tube.
Perhaps if you can connect with these people you carpool and rotate driving to come to the meetings more often.
Yeah, what was with the south bound traffic yesterday. It took my 1.5 hours to get to Redondo Beach.