Saturday, March 29, 2014

Journey South - Aruba - Butterfly Farm

This sign greets you on arrival at Port of Aruba
Boarding busses with fellow travelers
for various tours of the island.

Those things that look like jet engines --- the crew
refers to them as "BSTs" --- they actually have
no purpose except decoration, so they are
just the "Big Silver Things" ... BST
The most interesting thing (in John's humble opinion) on
Aruba is the Butterfly Farm
Welcome to the Farm

Wish I knew the name of all these butterflies. They
are kept in a very large screened-in area.


They may land right on you.

They enjoy dining on fruit

They also move pollen around like bees

These blue ones are hard to capture. Not a perfect focus
here, but close.

Is the color of the butterfly and the flower
just a coincidental match?

Black and White


Resting


Monarch



The one blue one, with wings open, is the same
type of butterfly as the others with wings closed.


One Happy Island
Next segment:  Cartagena, Columbia, South America.

Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Journey South

We recently embarked on a journey taking us across country to Florida where we boarded a ship that would take us to South America, through the Panama Canal and back to California. The first segment is a long one, a full day's flight from Seattle to Miami.


After going about as far as possible from one corner of the country to another, our destination the next day was Vizcaya Museum and Gardens since history and beautiful gardens are two of our favorite pursuits. Vizcaya is an estate build by one of America's wealthiest early industrialists, James Deering. He was a part of the family that created the International Harvester Company.



If this place looks like a mansion to you, let me assure you, it is. Deering spent the last part of his life building the place which is now a museum. The gardens are amazing.




Deering even created an Orchidarium ... the first one of these we've seen.  The original orchid garden was destroyed by a hurricane but a replica was built with a contribution from David A Klein, so the new garden is dedicated in his name.


The climate around Miami seems about perfect for orchids.

The David A Klein Orchidarium. Some of the individual
flowers are shown below.




Not an orchid (as far as we know)
but sure liked the colors.


While in the area, we drove out to Key Biscayne. Being from Seattle we are impressed with the palm trees lining the streets.

Island Paradise :-)


Looking back at Miami from the Rickenbacker Causeway
The thing that amazed us about Miami was all the construction ... it's booming and all the glass buildings are impressive.


We don't see many beautiful trees like this
in the middle of a busy boulevard.

In our next segement of the journey:  Aruba, aka "One Happy Island",  in the Southern Caribbean.

Thank you for stopping by John's Island.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Really Old Pics of Yellowstone - Part 3

We continue to share some scans of a few of the photochroms in our collection. Photochrom prints are colorized images produced from black-and-white photographic negatives via the direct photographic transfer of a negative onto lithographic printing plates. The process is a photographic variant of chromolithography, a broader term that refers to color lithography in general.

Hymen Terrace
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1902
Hotel from Jupiter Terrace
[Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel]
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1902
Riverside Geyser
by Detroit Photographic Company
Summit Basin
Mammoth Hot Springs
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1898
Old Faithful
by Detroit Photographic Company

The Paint Pot
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1902
Sapphire Pool
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1902
Golden Gate
Yellowstone National Park
by Detroit Photographic Company
1902
We plan to publish more of these in the future.

Travel update:  John spent most of this month travelling and so there have been few updates here on the Island. Yes, we could have updated while travelling, but what's the urgency?  This is retirement, not work. Ha ha. We will soon be sharing some of our voyage from Florida:  through the southern Caribbean, to South America, through the Panama Canal, and stops along the west coast of North America returning to Los Angeles.

Thanks for stopping by John's Island.

For Critter Friends

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