M&I / GBMINI

Our local PBS station “WUCF” carries a lot of British television, with the final season of Endeavour starting this weekend; we signed up to visit the station today and see a half hour preview of the new season – and also to tour the station. The tour was very interesting and here’s some photos … you can see a collection of trophies, a couple of work stations, the live (jazz) radio station, the tv studio with four cameras (incorporating teleprompters) and a green screen, a lot of technology that gets TV and radio broadcasts from the building out to consumers, and the TV studio control room with multiple display monitors, teleprompt control, mixing station and more … and I’ve no idea what the final squiggly display is showing (some sort of frequency/energy data I think), but it was cool!

Today we headed 1-1/2 hours north to Two Tails Ranch to experience their “Extreme Encounter” which includes some “one on one” time with an Elephant! The tour began with a talk about Elephants in general and those at the ranch – it was a bit heavy with politics but we did learn some facts (for example African and Asian Elephants have different numbers of toes); we toured the rest of ranch (Tortoises, a Zebra, a Camel, and a family of Ring Tailed Lemurs) … then on to more Elephant-y experiences where we fed an Elephant, took photos with an Elephant, helped wash an Elephant and even had a ride on one! Overall the $200/person cost seemed well justified with the enjoyment we had here!

Some photos from the presentation (there are three female Elephants at the ranch):

Photos of not-Elephants:

Photos from the “extreme” encounter: feeding, riding, washing and close-up photos: