Day 112, Year 11: Visit to Mounts Botanical Garden
Date: Thursday, February 11, 2016
Weather: Sunny!!! High 60’s, Low 50’s
Location: At Anchor in West Palm Beach City Anchorage, FL
We divided our day between work and play. We worked in the morning, Mark on his consulting job and me doing some boat maintenance. Then we worked together to go back and forth from the boat to the dock to fill our jerry jugs with water in order to fill our water tanks, five gallons at a time. We have known since last year that there are water valves underneath the dock, but we weren’t sure how to turn them on and whether or not we were allowed to do that. But our talk with other cruisers on the dock yesterday revealed the secret to getting water. Our tanks are now fully replenished and I can use the watermaker to keep them that way. Fantastic!
After eating lunch, we headed to shore to catch the free trolley to the train station. The local bus station is in the same location and today we were taking a bus to the Mounts Botanical Garden of Palm Beach County. It is only about six miles west of here, but it takes 45 minutes to get there by bus. So between rowing to shore, walking to the trolley stop, taking the trolley to the train station, waiting for the bus to arrive, and then riding the 45 minutes, it actually took an hour and a half to get there. But it only cost $1.00 for each of us. We can’t say enough good things about the public transportation system here. And the time in transit was definitely worth it. The botanical garden is lovely and the Lego creations interspersed throughout the garden were so impressive. These creations were all done by one artist, Sean Kenney, and they are not small. Some of the displays were life-sized—a gardening grandpa and his granddaughter, a wheelbarrow, deer (a buck, a doe, and a fawn), a peacock, and a birdbath. Others were larger than life. Mark and I voted a honeybee on a purple pansy as the most beautiful and I especially loved the monarch butterfly on milkweed. But the gardening grandpa and granddaughter (46,490 Legos) and the deer (84,442 Legos) were most impressive displays. Sunday is the last day of the Lego exhibit, but I hope to return to spend an entire day in the garden just looking at all the plants.
We got a call from Dave, The Mechanic on Wheels, this afternoon telling us our outboard motor is repaired and running great. He will deliver it to us in the morning. Sure hope it runs (and starts) as smoothly as he says. Although I’m a much better rower than I used to be thanks to my oldest grandchild Sam (a much better teacher than his granddad), having the motor as a back-up while Mark is away will be a comfort. And, by the way, Mark was feeling a bit better today, but still not his energetic self.
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| 160211 Day 112 Florida, USA–Mounts Botanical Garden Lego Display |
