Friday, December 28, 2012

Lakeland Florida


A little drive up to Lakeland today, made a stop at the Hollis Gardens at Lake Mirror. They were replanting a lot of the garden.






After that it was a stop at the Circle B Bar Reserve at Lake Hancock. We hiked about 2.5 miles here's a few pictures of some of the wildlife

AS ALWAYS CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO ENLARGE





Looks like the Spoonbill is sneaking up on the Gator
 
No Wildlife , just liked the reflection
 



Friday, January 13, 2012

Fort Christmas

Did a road trip over to Christmas Florida to tour Fort Christmas. It's been about 15 years since we were here last and they have added a ton of stuff, the first time we were here the only building was the reconstructed fort. Today it covers over 25 acres and contains a full size fort about ten other buildings that have been moved here from their original sites and is being developed into a living history museum, along with a large picnic and recreational area.



Each of the buildings is filled with displays and artifacts and today three of them had a docent present to answer any questions. There is a school house here that started as a one room school then went to two and eventually three rooms and was in use into the 60's, the cool thing is that three of the ladies we talked to attended this school. This is a very well planned and laid out park, donation are excepted, we spent about an hour and a half seeing the park.



 More information on Fort Christmas.

Here are some pictures of the park:  Click to enlarge.





 This Bronze was made by a man that was raised in one of the buildings in the park, at first we thought that it might be a Remington, but no.

"Scent of Man"


Around the park we found about seven sets of trees like this, A live Oak with a Palm either right next to it or growing out of the root system.












A simple wreath, it is Christmas after all.













and of course, Christmas is CLOSED Christmas.