Day 172

Today we went to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure and to Celebrate, a small community for dinner.

To enter the building where our hotel room was, there is a small pond with a walk way. In the pond are ducks, unlike any I've ever seen...

...and unusual turtles. These are our first odd animals we have encountered.

There are also hibiscus flowers around the property.

Islands of Adventure has a large variety of plants, to fit in with their different sections. Most are repeated around the park, as a lot of them are native.

Palm...I think?

A wispy tree with small flowers

These are fuzzy flowers of some sort.

The Dr. Seuss area had some plants that have been sculpted into unusual shapes.

Tree

Yertle the Turtle

Yellow flowers on a tree

Fuzzy pink flower

I like how this pretty pink flower has a spiky stalk. It's an interesting mix of soft and rough.

Male mallard duck

Red and green leaves

Female mallard duck

Low palm

Red flower on palm

Magnolia

Pink and purple flower

Pink flowers on a tree

My main peeve with Florida is these bugs. They are all over the place in HUGE amounts. They fly in pairs, probably making more.

At night, we went to Celebrate, which is a wealthy area of Orlando. We went there for excellent and inexpensive pizza.

They had these interesting flowers planted around the trees along the sidewalks.

There were these lily pad like plants growing along the edge of the pond, by the dock.

Day 80

Today, I went to Pony Pasture with Alex, Amanda Erickson and her friend Alan. We spent abou 2 hours exploring the river and the park. I took a lot of photos. Though I narrowed the 200+ photos to these, there are still a lot, so phone users beware...

Pony Pasture is on the James River, so lets start with a photo of the James River from Pony Pasture. As you can see, there are a lot of rocks. Being able to see them indicates that the water level is low. In the summer, this is good for lounging in the water, but not for tubing or rowing down the river.

Another shot of the river.

While we were exploring by the river, there were tree Mallard Ducks...two males and one female. One of the males came close to us. The water here is clear enough, that his feet are visible.

This is one of the male ducks hunting for food. Don't you love that duck butt!

There are two geese. On the rocks behind them (not in the photo) are lots of seagulls. The gulls were too far away for my camera to properly photograph them.

I was poking around the rocks and noticed this fern growing from one.

I liked these tree roots. They change color (probably from wear on the bark, due to people stepping on them) as they go into the water.

I love seeing moss grow in dead trees. It shows that life still goes on even in death.

This is the lovely Amanda taking a photo, as I photograph her. This is in the park area. There are lots of trees and trails. The way we came into this area looked overgrown and dead like some freaky horror movie...but still we entered. It was worth it.

See overgrown and creepy.

While taking a photo of this weird seed ball, I got caught on the surrounding briers. The briers weren't part of this seed plant, a small branch of the plant had landed on the brier bush. I was told not to lag behind or I'll get caught in the briers again...hehe.

We came to an area of a trail that had drainage issues. This made for mud and pretty photos. I liked that there was a reflection of trees and the depth of the leaves in the water was visible. I now love seeing wet leaves, because the undertones of the browns are very clear and beautiful.

This is sort of a double reflection, due to the break in the flow of water. I like that the height of the tree is reflected and connects to the trees each reflection comes from.

In the parking lot, there was a section with a large puddle of water. I thought this reflection showed the beauty in what is not normally seen as beautiful.