Just a little about our trip to Callaway Gardens

We got a package with a room, tickets to the Fantasy in Lights, and a day pass to the gardens. It is pretty reasonable. Check out the Callaway Gardens webpage for more information about that… I am not a salesperson for them, but since we did enjoy our stay, I’ll give them a plug!

Wednesday

We got there in plenty of time to check-in to the hotel and grab a bite to eat before our Fantasy in Lights tour (we got the trolley ride). We ate at the country store restaurant. Dana had the meat loaf and I had the catfish. Dana did enjoy her meat loaf. I liked the catfish, but to be completely honest… tasted kind of like what you would find at Folks Southern Kitchen. The biscuits and hush puppies were however, really good. The setting was really nice.

Then we went to the Fantasy in LIghts. We went into the Christmas Village. They had more than a dozen Christmas trees. They were all loaded with ornaments that were for sale. Santa was also there for the kids to tell him what they want for Christmas. No, I did not get my picture taken with Santa.

We then stood out by the lake and took in the Nativity scene. It was somewhat animated, but had music and narration to accompany the decoration.

Finally, it was time to hop the trolley and head into the Fantasy in Lights… (It was really hard to take night pictures of lights while moving… so the pictures aren’t great, but the experience was. I did take some video that I may edit and post to my MobileMe account.)

It was divided into several scenes. Such as Winter Wonderland. Mrs Claus’s house. 12 days of Christmas. And more…

It was really beautiful. I think the most most impressive part was the incorporation of sound into the display. It really adds quite a bit of depth to the display.

The worst part: It was COLD. I shouldn’t have wore my Chucks. I should have worn my boots. My feet got so cold. I was happy to get back to the Jeep and warm up my feet!

Thursday

We got up and had breakfast at the breakfast bar in the hotel. It was pretty good. Also a part of the package. That made it even better! 🙂

Then we went back to the Country store to make a few pictures around the store before heading into the gardens.

We went to two major places:

Day Butterfly Center

On the way to the Day Butterfly Center, we stopped at a Pioneer cabin. That was really cool.

This is a glass building that has tropical butterflies. They don’t have any domestic butterflies. Butterflies can be so beautiful. We sat in a presentation about the lifecycle of a butterfly. We learned quite a bit about butterflies.

Birds of Prey show

We went to this show. They showed a few large raptor birds. A hawk, an owl, and a vulture.

The hawk was my favorite. It is a beautiful bird that is an excellent hunter. They let the birds just fly around. They were not tethered. So, one of the times it flew from the back to the front of the amphitheater, I felt the talons on my head! That is a favorite memory from the trip.

The owl was really cool. We learned about how it hears and how it hunts. My favorite line from the presentation was “if you are smaller than Juniper [the owl], you are possibly prey for Juniper”

The vulture, well, we did not as excited about, but once we learned about vultures, we were fascinated. Vultures can ingest all sorts of diseases but they never come out. We learned about their eating habits. They aren’t the best fliers and are ground nesters. So, instead of always flying from the back to the front of the amphitheater, it would walk. Was almost a waddle. Vultures are good for our environment and people shouldn’t just think of them as dirty birds.

After the show, we ate lunch and then drove around the park. We really want to go back in the spring/summer. The beach will be open and the flowers will be in bloom. It was also not be so COLD.

This was a very enjoyable trip. I would recommend that everybody go at least once.

Check out the rest of the pictures on my MoblieMe account. Dana took 99% of the pictures on her Nikon DSLR camera. I took the other 1% on her camera as well. She makes really great pictures…