November | 2015 | The World as We See It

At least for us they weren’t. They were $18 for the two of us, and totally worth it.

We went camping up near Gainesville a few weeks ago to celebrate what we thought was the breaking of the long Florida summer. We were … mistaken. It was hot and humid with mosquitoes threatening to carry us away. This is not exactly an inducement to go hiking in what can accurately be described as swampland, so we hit the internet to see what else we could do under more comfortable circumstances. And by “comfortable” I mean “air-conditioned.” Gainesville, for those of you who don’t know, is the college town for the University of Florida. We discovered that it has both a Natural History and Art Museum on the campus (next door to each other, in fact) so we decided to get all cultural and check them out. Patti also read that the Natural History Museum had a butterfly garden that had received rave reviews so we put that on the list. Turns out both museums have free entry, but the butterfly garden cost $10 per person, $9 for Florida residents. We coughed up the $18, went through the airlock doors (to prevent the butterflies from escaping) and HOLY COW!

Florida Museum of Natural History, Gainesville, FL, 10/10/15

As soon as we walked in, we saw the photo to the right: a woman taking a selfie had a butterfly land on her screen. They were landing on kids, cameras, plants, railings, everywhere. There were thousands of them and they were beautiful. The actual walk through the garden isn’t very long, but we found ourselves just loitering about watching them, and watching the kids watching them. It was totally worth the price and an extremely enjoyable experience. It was also a LOT better than sweltering in the October Florida heat.

PS: I’m writing this on November 1st and we’re still waiting for things to cool off. <sigh>