Virtual Vacation: Botanical Gardens

There are four posts below (I would apologize, but it's my blog and I'm really not sorry) that cover our trip to Hershey Gardens. I saw this listed in a Triple A book and thought it looked like a fun place to go. I'd never before been to a botanical garden, so I was absolutely fascinated. I don't know how this one stacks up to other gardens around the country, but I have to say I was impressed with the variety and the beauty of the place!

Just to give you an idea...the site says the gardens cover 23 acres, and here are the types of areas they offered: a rose garden, an Italian rose garden, the children's garden, the butterfly house, the oak grove, a Japanese garden, ornamental grasses, an arboretum, a conifer collection, another rose garden, an herb garden, a perennial garden, a memorial garden, the square and fan gardens, and a garden dedicated to a former director of the Hershey Gardens.

We spent over two hours in the Gardens and loved every minute of it.

Here is one of the best "overall" views we got - and this still probably only covered an itty bitty part of it. We didn't have the greatest weather day, but it didn't matter.

I am going to make a sign like this...

...for when my yard looks like this. :)

Amber took this picture and it just cracked me up. No, this bird was not responsible for the mess under it, but it sure looks like it, doesn't it? :) I think in my scrapbook, I'll caption this, "Some days are just like this."

They had many weeping trees (you'll see a whole post on one of them below) but this was one of the more unusual ones.

If you've read my blog for very long, you know I l-o-v-e roses. To be in a garden with three whole areas designated for roses...well, I was in heaven.

Hey Skyepuppy - are you proud(ish) of this one? I remembered to do an angle shot with my camera. This was back in the tree part of the garden, and it was absolutely tranquil back there. I loved it...could have stayed for hours more!

I was pretty proud of this picture, too. There were a number of ponds and fountains around the garden.

I'm normally not a big fan of sculpture, but this one was good. I think I liked the incorporation of color. I don't recall seeing color on a sculpture like this before.

The only kind of bluegrass I can stand. :)

Amber..."attacked" by one of the weeping trees.

We took this picture for Amber's mom, who loves yellow roses.

The only two disappointing things were the lack of activity in the butterfly garden (more on that in a post below) and the non-existence of Swan Lake. This is the lake, which the sign says they drain a few times a year for cleaning and such. This was one of those times. We took a picture anyway...just imagine your own swans, I guess. In the background, up on the hill, was a hotel where we did NOT stay. It was one of the uber-expensive ones.

Below are more posts about specific parts of the garden. I promise promise promise the next posting session will be about chocolate!!

Virtual Vacation: Botanical Garden Children's Garden

There were many different areas to the gardens, and one of the fun areas was the Children's Garden. About the time we made our way toward it, a massive field trip showed up, so we had to keep dodging kids. But then again, I guess we were invading their area. LOL.

The Children's Garden was a little bit different from the main part - because there were more teaching tools incorporated. There were also several themes that were fun and different.

Here's Amber at the entrance to that part of the Garden.

These kisses shot out some water mist at various intervals. We thought we could get it in action, but it never worked. I think, however, we amused one of the workers in the process. We didn't see her sitting over to the side reading a book. (She was watching the entrance to the butterfly house...not loafing on the job.)

The walkway had these Hershey bar bricks to teach fractions. I took a picture of the whole bar because I see no point in a half used candy bar. But there were some that had "pieces" out and you could figure out how many twelfths were missing. Now maybe if they'd taught math to me that way in school, I'd like it better!!!

One of the sections had a plant for every letter of the alphabet. Amber posed with the "A" plant...

And of course, I posed with "R."

I should have taken more pictures of this part, but I didn't. They had a "spa" section where they grew plants used in spa products. The plants grew in a claw foot tub, and they made a "window" beside it with a "curtain" of climbing trellis plants. Super cute. At the end of the tub were these rock slippers that you could try on.

We have a picture of Amber demonstrating this, but she hated the picture, so I didn't post it. We couldn't really do this because it was such a cloudy day, but they had a human sundial. You stood on the brick according to the month and held your arm up in the air...and the shadow was supposed to fall across the appropriate hour.

This was just outside the exit to the butterfly garden. This was a "love garden." Why they had that in the children's part, I don't know. But the pond is a heart shape, and the little stools are upside down kisses. Cute, huh?

Amber took this and I really liked it. You can't tell this very well, but the path leading from the camera to the kisses is a butterfly body, and the flowers on either side are in the shape of wings. The butterfly garden is just to the right. We took some pictures in there, but I'm not posting them because they weren't very good. We were told since it was so cold and rainy, the butterflies were not active. That was so true. We only saw a couple.

The children's garden had other things in it - and there was also an "amphitheater" in it, with very brightly colored seats. The group there hadn't gotten to the part of using it yet, but it was roped off for them. I thought it made a great field trip location!

Virtual Vacation: Botanical Garden Weeping Tree

Amber and I loved this enormous weeping tree. I forget the exact name of it - and the name plate in the pictures is too small to read. I had to back up pretty far to get the whole tree in the frame of my camera.

There were little arbors at the "entrance" to the tree. If I wrote fiction, this would have been a perfect spot to find a story idea...entering the secret tree.

Amber under the tree. You can see where it had rained and the top part of the tree trunk was still wet.

As you can see, the branches were very curvy. Made for some fun shots!

You can kind of see, to the left here, how people have carved on the tree over the years. There was a sign posted by the trunk asking people to please stop carving on the tree.

Virtual Vacation: Botanical Garden Close-Ups

And now, for the close-up pictures.

Amber was an art major in college, so she's really good with pictures. You'll be able to tell right away which ones were hers. It had rained in the night, and since we visited first thing in the morning (and by that, I mean 11:00ish), all the plants were still covered in raindrops. They were beautiful.

Amber taught me to use the macro setting (as if I even know what that means) on my camera to get some close-ups.

Skyepuppy, I needed your tutorial in front of me....you would have found better shots!

Here was some of the ornamental grass:

Raindrops on roses....

This was one of my first attempts. I'd actually taken a picture of this before she taught me about the setting, and I went back and redid it. I should have kept the first one to show the difference. But...I was trying to conserve memory card space.

Amber...taking pictures of me with my newfound skill. The rest of the pictures on down are her creations. Enjoy them!

Better raindrops on a prettier rose:

LOVE this one.

And this one:

Some of my other close ups were on the teaser post from earlier this week. Hope you enjoyed the close-ups! If I ever go back to Hershey, this would definitely be on my must-see list again. I know it has nothing to do with chocolate, but it was beautiful. And I'd kind of like to see it on a sunny day, too!

Virtual Vacation: Part Two

I'm trying very hard to stay awake until the end of The Tonight Show. I'm sad that it's Jay's last night, so I'm trying to stay up to see the entire thing. In an attempt to remain awake, I'm going ahead with part two of the vacation. (Okay I'm really just trying to get to the chocolate so Christina can be so happy!)

Like I said, this was my first ever vacation, and I took the planning of it very seriously. The mapping out of the route...the budget assembly...the stalking of the weather forecasts...the once over (six times over?) of the car...the selection of a house/cat sitter...it's really an involved process to be on vacation!

One of the things I spent literally hours researching was the hotel. I wanted to make sure I found an affordable place...that wasn't scary...that was fun...but not over the top. It's so hard to do that when you don't know the area. After my hours of searching...various engines...combing a AAA book...reading dozens of reviews...

...I selected the Comfort Inn.

Loved it that it was so tall...had interior corridors...and according to the reviews, the highlights of the establishment were the water pressure, the continental breakfast, and the duck pond. I would have to say I was more than satisfied with all three.

Since it was chilly and misty for our entire visit, we didn't really hang out at the duck pond to feed the ducks, but we did wave at them and I managed to not kill any of them when entering and leaving the hotel premises. I did think it was really cool that the ducks lived there. Not so cool when we ran a suitcase through duck poop, but whatever.

Yes, I know I'm on my side. I'll try to fix it later. I couldn't get the picture to flip in my album. Well, I got it to flip, but it won't save. Anyway, the breakfast at this place ROCKED. Cereal, hard-boiled eggs, fruit salad, danishes and donuts, toast and bagels, and...make your own waffles. And I did.

Loved being able to remain connected. The laptop life is the best. We got a room that had a regular bed and then a sofa bed. I thought since we would be there a couple of days, it might be nice to have "real furniture" in the room.

Amber...perusing the world's worst map of Hershey. About 70% of the town's roads were not on the map, making it very difficult to navigate the place. We did get pretty lost at one point - and I had a minor meltdown. I hate being lost.

So if you're ever headed to Hershey, and you don't want to pay MAJOR bucks to stay in any of the resorts...I highly recommend the Comfort Inn. Just watch out for duck poop.

Virtual Vacation: Part One

262.

It's the number of pictures I developed today. I'm pretty sure the photo lab hates me. But I couldn't be happier. A whole box of pictures and a blank scrapbook just begging to be filled. What a dream.

I promise you will not have to look at all 262 pictures. But I have had a request to give a little bit more detail about the trip. And since I don't understand the meaning of the word "little" - here you go! :)

First I should tell you that this is my first ever big girl vacation. I went on trips with my parents when I lived at home. And since being out on my own, I've gone on a few overnighters just for fun...and I've visited my sister and family out in Kansas a few times. But I've never gone on a for-real vacation before.

Why?

Well, plain and simple, I didn't feel I could afford it. I didn't want to borrow money to go on vacation, and in years leading up to this, I wanted to focus any extra money on other things that were more important. But this year I managed to save money through a variety of creative ways, and I decided to reward myself by taking a little vacation.

I wanted to go somewhere affordable, so I decided to skip out on major resort sorts of places, and I invited my friend Amber to go with me so we could split the costs. Those two things were exactly what I needed to be able to afford a few days away. Being a chocoholic, I decided Hershey was the perfect destination. :)

Armed with Amber's atlas, and my printed directions, we left my house on Tuesday morning. Destination: Hershey. We were lost before we even left Indiana. Takes a special kind of talent to get lost that close to home. But we (and by we, I mean Amber) asked for directions and we made it back on the targeted path without losing too much time.


I drove the first stretch of the trip. This was a huge accomplishment for me because I'm not known for my open road driving skills. Getting lost, yes. Driving, no. Amber was my GPS, and together we figured it out. I was so nervous that first day, because when we stopped a couple hours after starting...my car died. I worried the rest of the day that we'd be a roadside trauma, but we weren't.

We did have a lot of fun laughing at each other, though! Yes, I did take this picture while driving.


Shortly before Columbus, Amber took over. We both felt it safer that way. We decided during that stretch of the trip that cars should have multiple horn sounds. You know, a sound for "GET OUT OF THE WAY, YOU MORON!!" A sound for "Hey, friend!" A sound for "I'm over here; don't hit me!" You get the idea.

We were so excited to cross into Ohio...proof that we really were on the right road. As you can see, we didn't have the most beautiful day for travel, although we did have spots of sunshine along the way. Clearly this was not one of them. While in Ohio, we learned it is a very deadly state for deer, and the most heavily cop-drenched stretch of road we faced. (Oh, did I mention my extreme fear of cops? I think I needed a defibrillator twice.)

West Virginia!! I didn't even realize we'd be in this state...it sticks up a little bit between Ohio and Pennsylvania, so we were in it for about 15 minutes. That was the best part of the whole state. In no time at all, we could cross an entire state! This was also where we experienced our first tunnel of the drive.

Pennsylvania at last. This state is overloaded with signs. I didn't have time to pay attention to the driving because I was so busy reading the signs! We also decided the turnpike was very boring driving. Plus there's something very panic-inducing about seeing notification that if you don't go to the bathroom now, you have to wait forty more minutes!

Tunnels, tunnels, tunnels!! We went through a lot of tunnels in Pennsylvania. We took a number of pictures too...which I'm sure made all the drivers around us kind of wonder. It's weird to be that enclosed, speeding along so fast. No room for error!

Bekah drives in the tunnel....

And here is just one of many pictures we took of the scenery in the mountains. When you live in flatland Indiana, these sights are beautiful even if they are covered in fog! We arrived in Pennsylvania around dusk, too, so it limited our view a bit.

So that's part one of your virtual vacation. The drive to Hershey. Thanks for going along! :)

Where in the World was Bekah?

This was Bekah (and Braeya) on Tuesday morning. This picture was taken to prove to Bekah's mother that she really can travel lighter than a U-Haul.

This is Bekah playing GPS.

This was Bekah playing driver.

This was one heavenly (albeit short) vacation.

More to come! Stay tuned!