More Florida

Last week my husband and I set off on another adventure. We took an unplanned road trip through Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Unplanned trips are great because there's no schedule to keep and no expectations. We didn't book any accommodations, we made no reservations and did no research into museums or activities. We just got in the car and drove. 

Our first stop was right here in our own town at the Port Saint Lucie Botanical Garden where they were having their annual free tree giveaway. 

First, you had to register and get your ticket. Then you had to go to 5 out of 7 educational booths in order to get your tree. The booths were manned by volunteer Master Gardeners who were there to teach us how to take care of our new trees.

 The topics covered information about each type of tree, climate, soil, planting, pruning, watering, pests, fertilizing and more. 

I have to say that I learned a lot of useful information from each Master Gardener because this New York native is really not great when it comes to living green things. Once our ticket was punched from all 5 booths we were allowed to select a tree.

We chose the Southern Live Oak. This is a picture of it in the back of our car. We had to fold down the back seats and lay it down in the trunk. It reached all the way to the front. 

Eventually, this tree will grow to be 40 to 60 feet tall and will have a spread of 60 to 100 feet. We planted it next to our hammock so that in 30 years we'll have shade!

Once we adopted our tree we were back on the road and drove north to Lake City, Florida. This area of Florida is about as country as it gets. You know you're in the country when you have a store that sells thousands of cowboy boots in every size, design, and color imaginable. 

There's not much to do in this area except for the boot store and the Florida Welcome Center where you can get discounted theme park tickets, free orange juice and see a 14 foot stuffed alligator. The reason for this stop was because it's located near Ichetucknee Springs State Park. (Click this link for address and hours of operation information)

The Ichetucknee River is the best place for tubing in Florida. It costs just $6 per car to enter the state park and you can rent tubes at various stands located along the road outside the park. The river is 6 miles long and stunningly beautiful. It was one of the most relaxing activities I've ever done. We got there early and so there were only a few other people in the river. As the current took us down the river we watched the morning fog rise off the water. We listened to the birds wake up and start to sing while we gently floated by. I only wish that I still had my GoPro camera so I could share pictures but it's just more incentive for you to go and see for yourself. I know that I can't wait to go back again. 

Please come back next week to read all about the next leg of our adventure in Alabama.

Iao Valley State Park

In Hawai'ian, 'Iao (pronounced EE-ow) means "cloud supreme" 

Iao Stream

Iao Valley was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1972

Iao Needle

Located in Central Maui just west of Wailuku and home to one of Maui's most recognizable landmarks, Kuka`emoku (the Iao Needle), an erosional feature which rises 1200 feet from the valley floor. For the best view of the needle, visit in the morning as it is often obscured by cloud cover later in the day.

The park is 10 miles long and is 4,000 acres of lush landscape and easy hiking paths.

There is a 0.6 mile paved pedestrian path that leads to the Iao needle viewing point and provides a scenic lookout with expansive views of the valley.

Aside from its natural tropical beauty, sacred Iao Valley has great historical significance. In 1790 it was the site of the battle of Kepaniwai where the forces of Kamehameha I conquered the Maui army and ultimately changed the course of Hawaiian history.

Families can also take a rainforest walk or explore interactive exhibits at the Hawaii Nature Center, which is also located within Iao Valley. 

Also within Iao Valley is the Kepaniwai Park's Heritage Gardens. Since 1952, they have memorialized Maui's multicultural history. Scale models of ethnic buildings and gardens representing the immigration of Hawaiian, Filipino, Chinese, American missionary, Japanese, Korean, and Portuguese cultures are the park's highlight. 

There are restrooms and picnic tables in the gardens as well so be sure to pack your picnic basket!

Iao Valley is located at the end of Iao Valley Road (Highway 32). It is open daily from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The entrance fee is $5.00 per car. There is no fee for Hawaii residents or for walk-in visitors.

Happy Blogiversary!

Happy blogiversary to Museum Trekker! Today is the 5 year anniversary of this blog. Let's celebrate by taking a look back at all the great Museum Trekker moments.

Since starting this blog I've gone on more than 25 domestic trips within the United States and somewhere around 18 trips abroad. I've visited hundreds of museums, zoos, aquariums, galleries, libraries, historical landmarks, botanical gardens, and National parks. I've traveled by car, van, bus, plane, train, boat, camel, elephant, kayak, snowshoe, parade float, canoe, rowboat, tuk-tuk, rickshaw, bicycle, moped, standup paddleboard, surfboard, and raft. In the midst of all that I've been a part of designing many fantastic museum exhibits, illustrated two books, started Graduate school, then took leave from Grad school and took a job traveling the world, got married, moved 3 times, and had my art displayed in 4 galleries in 4 different States. My husband and I have each been banished from a foreign country (read: NOT on the road in Canada and India) and somewhere in between, I've managed to write 80 posts.

I was feeling like I should post more often but as I'm writing this I realize I can't even quantify the exact number of flights I've taken, museums visited, suitcases, backpacks, shoes I've destroyed as I've completely lost track so now I feel like 80 is not bad considering I've literally circled the entire planet. 

Every morning I wake up, I have to think about where I am...Nepal, Fiji, Hawaii and wonder how the heck did I get here? I write this not to be boastful because I know that there were so many important people in my life who helped make all this great stuff happen for me. I think mentors are invaluable and I am fortunate to have had many whether they know it or not. I always try to pay it forward because I know that I wouldn't have been able to experience this amazing life without the support and guidance of others. I started to write about all of my mentors in this post but then it got to be so long that I've decided to write a separate post as I have a lot of gratitude and appreciation to express. Click here to read: A Tribute To My Mentors. 

I've also kept a pen pal for the past 4 1/2 years. Natalie and I met on my trip to Ohio in 2008. I was traveling alone as usual and was sitting in a cafe all by myself when she and her friend engaged me in a conversation to settle an argument they were having over whether I was Turkish or Columbian. They both lost the argument but we wound up becoming instant friends and spent the next several hours out in the Short North, the trendy and artsy entertainment district of Columbus. I haven't seen her since but we've been faithfully emailing each other every 2-4 weeks for the past 5 years. As you know from my post, Postcard Revival, I've been trying to keep the art of postcards alive and have been sending postcards home from around the world and also participated in a Postcard exhibit in Chicago a few months ago. In this new world of Facebook and Twitter, email, like it's predecessors hand-written letters and postcards, has become a lost form of communication. We just see snippets of people's lives through status updates but Natalie and I compose long and thoughtful emails to each other, something most people these days have become "too busy" to do. Since we met, Natalie has also traveled the world, gotten her Masters Degree and started a new job in Washington D.C. Last year she visited New York for the first time but I was in Hawaii. Doh! We decided that a reunion in New York, D.C., or Ohio wouldn't suit us so one day I will write a blog post about our reunion in some faraway place like Bhutan or Mongolia. 

So, In honor of my 5-year blogiversary, I've highlighted some of my past posts below. It would be tough to pick my favorite museum from all of my trips as I do love them all. If I had to pick one (excluding all museums that I have created exhibits for) it would have to be the Henry Ford in Michigan because it has such a wide range of exhibits that there is something for everyone. My favorite botanical garden is Jardin Botanique de Montreal. My favorite State I've visited so far (excluding those I've lived in) is Colorado. And my favorite Country (if you haven't figured it out by the 7 posts I've written about it) is New Zealand.

Thank you to all who have been following this little blog for the past 5 wonderful years and welcome to all of my new readers!

Florida:

Palm Beach Zoo

Museums of the Future

California:

Disneyland

Star Gazing in Los Angeles

San Francisco

Michigan and Canada:

On the road in Michigan and Canada (part 1)

On the road in Michigan and Canada (part 2)

Wisconsin:

On the road in Wisconsin (part 1)

On the road in Wisconsin (part 2)

Ohio:

On the road in Ohio

New York and Pennsylvania:

Be a tourist in your own neighborhood

I love the Library

Pompeii comes to Times Square

New York and Philadelphia

Colorado:

Back on the road in Colorado (part 1)

Back on the road in Colorado (part 2)

Connecticut:

Design for All

North Carolina and Virginia

On the road AGAIN! North Carolina and Virginia

Texas:

On the road again in Texas

Tennessee:

Walkin' in Memphis

Massachusetts:

On the road in Boston, Massachusetts

Hawaii:

Hawaii (Part 1) Oahu

Hawaii (Part 2) Maui

Other Countries:

On the road in Mexico

On the road in Montreal

Adventures in Kiwi Land

Mount Maunganui, Tauranga, New Zealand

New Zealand-Tauranga and the Coromandel Peninsula

New Zealand Continued

New Zealand-Goodbye for now...

Wexford, Ireland

Turkey

South Africa 

Swaziland

14 Hours in Abu Dhabi

Nepal

India

Vietnam

Thailand

Australia

New Zealand-South Island

New Zealand-North Island

Fiji

Lovely Ireland

On the road in Montreal

I’m back home now from my trip to Montreal. There was so much to see and do there that it was hard to decide. I did lots of sight-seeing. Highlights were the hike I took through Parc du Mont Royal. The foliage is absolutely beautiful this time of year and the fall leaves, all gold and orange and red, were falling from the trees like snow. There’s a long staircase that goes up to the top of the hill and overlooks the entire city. The view was breathtaking.

I was staying in an excellent location right in Downtown Montreal which had a ton of great museums and restaurants as well as fantastic architecture to look at. Another area that I really loved was Vieux-Montreal (Old Montreal) which had the Notre Dame Basilica, Clock tower, Hotel de Ville and lots of other Neo-Classical buildings to admire.

Botanical Gardens

Over the weekend I went to the Botanical Garden, the Insectarium and the Biodome. You can buy a combo ticket for all three of these places which is what I did. The woman at the ticket booth told me that I could see all of these places in one day but this turned out to be absolutely insane!!! The Botanical Garden is enormous and involves a ton of walking plus it’s the type of place that you don’t want to rush through. You could literally spend the entire day here and still not see the whole thing. It is recognized as one of the world’s finest and largest botanical gardens and I know I mentioned my previous blog that I am not much of a “plant person” but I was definitely blown away. (The one plant that I own has been sitting in a bucket of water in my apartment while I’ve been traveling and it has actually never looked better. I feel a little insulted that it has been thriving in my absence. )

The gardens and arboretum were impressively beautiful and there were also 10 greenhouses as well as various art exhibitions in some of their thematic gardens, and the Tree House which has a permanent interactive exhibit and activities for kids. If you want to see it all while avoiding the painful sensation that your legs are going to fall off, I’d recommend hopping on and off the mini-train which drives around the park. This is an especially good idea if you have kids.

I also thought that it was nice that they had a “Courtyard of the Senses.” This is a little area where everything is at wheelchair/child height and you are encouraged to touch and smell the plants and flowers. The labels are also in Braille and the path is wheelchair accessible.




My favorite garden in the park was the Chinese Garden. Most of the park closed at 5 o’clock but they kept Chinese Garden open until 9. When the sun went down, all of the lanterns lit up and it was really pretty.

Biodome

The park has a free shuttle bus which will take you over to the Olympic Stadium and the Biodome which was my next stop. I guess the Biodome could be described as an indoor zoo. It has these faux-natural depictions of four ecosystems. It’s a good rainy day activity but if you’re looking to occupy your kids for an entire day then this is not the place to go. You can see the whole thing in one hour and don’t expect to see any large animals. The biggest animal I saw was a sea otter. The Madagascar exhibit was pretty disappointing too. It was basically a small room with about 3 or 4 lemurs sitting in a tree. I am a little biased though, since I was just working on the Madagascar exhibit at the Bronx Zoo back in June and it is a million times better than the Biodome’s exhibit (I’ve been meaning to write a new blog about the opening of this exhibit so check back in the near future to read all about it!).

One of the things I did like about the Biodome was the graphics in the Marine Ecosystem. They had both overhead and floor graphics and the floor tiles had a rock and water design. Placement of graphics in Aquarium settings is always tricky because everyone tends to lean on the handrail, which is the typical placement for animal ID’s, and then no one can read them. The Biodome had ID’s overhead and on the floor which was pretty clever since most people were looking down to see the fish.

Insectarium

After zipping through the Biodome I hopped back on the shuttle to the Insectarium. My expectations were that it was either going to be A) Creepy. or B)Gross. But to my surprise it was C) None of the Above. The museum was actually quite phenomenal. It had live insect displays as well as 160,000 fantastic mounted specimens throughout the entire space.     
                            

From my observation, the kids absolutely loved it and so did I. The museum was extremely kid-friendly (because kids love bugs) and there were lots of low to the ground insect/kid height displays (see image on the left) which I never would have noticed if one little girl didn’t slam into my knees and start clapping and jumping up and down when she saw it. I thought these ground displays were very clever and a nice touch.

This butterfly display in the image here shows the butterfly migration from Canada through the United States to Mexico. I found this particularly interesting because I followed a similar migration pattern although not in the same order. I’d have to say the way the butterflies do it is much better.

 

Which brings me to my travel tips for this week….

1) I do not recommend traveling straight from a country that is typical 90 degrees every day to a country that is typically 40 degrees every day. This is very painful.

2) Tell immigration that you are a tourist even if you are traveling for business. This will save you a lot of time and frustration and will prevent you from being detained for not having a work permit while you watch from a glass room everyone else who is allowed to enter the country.

3) Become bilingual OR at least learn how to say “I am not a spy who is trying to steal company secrets” in both Spanish and French.

4) Once again…Don’t fly on Delta. If you have no other choice then arrive at the airport an hour earlier than the recommended 1 hour before your flight’s departure or else you will be running to board your flight while they are announcing your name throughout the entire airport. Their check-in process and security is always a disorganized mess no matter what airport.

So that’s it for now for my “On the Road” adventures. It’s been 8 weeks, about 15 cities, 16 flights and 10 hotels. I’m happy to say I made it home in one piece which is pretty impressive since the airline literally made me sign a waiver to release the remains of my suitcase and my shoes completely disintegrated while still on my feet. It’s been a lot of fun and an amazing experience but now I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with my couch!