Wings and wildflower festival!

    We discovered that our county is having a 3 day festival for birding and wild flowers this weekend. I must say it was quite awesome. It was the third annual festival. There were events all over Lake county but we stayed in Venetian Gardens. There was a ton of stuff to do just right there, especially if you have kids.

This was a book of events that was happening almost every park in the county had something interesting going on.

We missed the first day of the festival and ended up just going Saturday and Sunday. Saturday we stopped by with our dog, who we had taken with us to the Saturday market in down town, and realized this was great for kids so... we went home called the oldest daughter and everyone decided to go.

The first place we stopped at was the natural gardening where they were selling all sorts of plant most of them were native to Florida and none invasive and friendly for bees and butterflies.

natural farm area.

not sure what this plant is but it had an amazing bloom very large and exotic looking flower.

Fiddle head fern. 

Then we went back and got the oldest daughter and the grandkids and made it back in time to see the gator land show that was being put on. 

Gatorland man with a giant cane toad!

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Granddaughter got to pet the alligator she said it was soft. 

After the show we walked around and let the kids see everything. Even grandson was having fun and he is cutting teeth.

They were handing out free pens and flower seeds.

 Then we ran into a butter fly experience tent. It was a lot of fun for grand daughter she got to have a butter fly sit on her she said it tickled. There were all kinds of butterflies in the tent it was really a neet experience.

There were all sorts of crafts for kids and we did some of them. There was a whole inside exhibit area with everything you can think of that would do with outside things. We even found a lady that was selling water barrows with the city of Mt. Dora. She had a whole water conservation exhibit and we got free water bottles and came back the next day for the rain barrow. There were live bees in a see through hive. There were people from park services and even artist. Tons of stuff. And just about every both had something for free. And if you know me you know I love the free stuff.   

Before we left we let the kids run out on the dock and check out the lake. 

So Sunday we came back for the rain barrow and found out that we could take a free guided tour out to monkey island. So we did cause it was free. 

Husband with the rain barrow. It is 55 gallons and has a spicket.

The canoeing was hosted by Lake County Water Authority.

This was the launch point for the canoe and kayaks.

Here we are waiting to be launched into the water.

This was the island we paddled to.

 Our guide told us that there are aerators in the canals that run through Venetian Gardens and that the Gardens were built in like 1920.

This was our guide and she was great. The bubbles in front of her are from the aerator.

We floated through the canals and channels of the gardens before heading out into Little Lake Harris.

 We floated past the marina.

This was a photographer that we met she was very friendly. 

 We floated under a fallen tree.

Tree we floated under.

We floated down a canal behind the baseball stadium and found out that there used to be a big professional baseball team in Leesburg and Babe Ruth himself played here.

Only had one person run into a tree and it wasn't us.

After making it out to the island we floated back to shore.

We passed giant lily pads on the way back in.

Back under the bridge to the gardens.

Youngest daughter was excited about something.

I was amazed by the big lily pads.

lily pads.

And then after we moseyed our way home.

We passed some amazing cypress knolls.

And we found these awesome snail shells in the lake. Our guide said the red ones were an invasive species. The shells were huge.

I think we will definitely be going back the the Wings and Wildflowers Festival next year. I think everyone had fun and there was tons of interesting things to do. Plus it was free!