Florida Museum of Natural History, April 22, 2010

The Florida Museum of Natural History is located on the campus of The University of Florida in Gainesville. Carolyn made the trip with us and our main focus was to see the butterfly exhibit. That alone was worth the trip but there is so much more than butterflies...these pictures do not do justice to the museum.






Just inside the front door...












All those little dots are butterflies...all the way down the hall as far as you can see.









These next few pictures are some of the life-like exhibits of Florida nature. Some are large and some are small but all are painstakingly made.














We didn't get pictures but there is a realistic cave with "critters" to depict an actual Florida cave. I was the only one brave enough to enter, ha ha.















A Florida beach at sunset...














There was a whole row of shark jaws, all recovered from the St. John's River - the RIVER!

Jaws was just a baby compared to this giant. Why am I smiling???





Ah, the butterfly garden. Visitors are not allowed to touch the butterflies but the butterflies can land on you (if they want). Oh, my, thousands of them...all colors and shapes, in constant motion all around.
The garden walk moves up as it winds around to depict the different habitats of the different butterflies. Some stay very low to the ground while others fly higher and higher. There were fish and turtles in the water and all the flora is native and real. The sound of rushing water makes you feel as if you were in a tropical rain forest.






























































There are always special exhibits that come to the museum and there was a quilt exhibit at the time we were visiting.

Many of the quilts depicted Florida scenes, animals, and flowers. I always pictured quilts as squares sewed together, but the methods used in quilting are varied and some very complex. These were some of our favorites.




































Here is sort of a different picture of where we ate lunch. Instead of a picture of the food (which was absolutely fantastic), we ladies stood under the sign of Blue Highway. Y'all, this is the place for pizza and key lime pie!!!!

Note:
We all wore colorful clothes in hopes that the butterflies would flock to us but, alas, it didn't work. Not one butterfly landed on any of us, nor on anyone else that I saw. There are so many flowers I guess they weren't interested in us.