Safari plans

Posted on by Ian C.

Living near to Walt Disney World we can visit Animal Kingdom and ride their Kilimanjaro Safari ride when we wish – but of course it’s not like a real Africa Safari. Margaret has always wanted to go to Africa and do a real safari, and we’ve now made plans to do exactly that, later this year!

Meanwhile, we headed to Animal Kingdom today to do “safari practice”, giving me a chance to check out my new camera on hard to photograph distant animals, while riding a bumpy vehicle! Here’s the results (the lion was REALLY HARD to get – I was sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle, too):


We also posed in our safari hats, and met Mickey & Minnie in their “matching” hats:

Nehrling Gardens

Posted on by Ian C.

We visited a local “historic gardens” today; Nehrling Gardens created at the end of the 19th century by Henry Nehrling – he came to Florida from Wisconsin because he wanted a year round garden! He apparently specialized in Caladium plants, and the garden trust is slowly re-establishing a variety of them but for now they are not as impressive as they must once have been.

He built a home on a small part of the 40 acre lot that he purchased; that lot has been divided many times since, but the home is still in the gardens:

Most impressive to me were the Bamboo plants; one cluster (“Golden Bamboo” – second and third picture) was huge!


Also impressive how fungus is taking over dead wood:

 

 

The Gardens are also less than a mile from a great BBQ place, Yellow Dog Eats, so of course we finished our visit with lunch there:

Yellow Dog Eats