A Summary of My 2016 Travel Adventures

At the beginning of every new year I like to look back at the previous year and review my favorite outfits, and remember all the home, garden, and crafting projects I took on, and also all our travel adventures.  Our travel adventures is always my favorite to review because I remember such happy times.  I also think one tends to forget vacations so quickly, so it's nice to go back and look at pictures and re-live them through memories.

Here is where I traveled this year!

This year was the first time in probably over thirty years where I traveled by plane alone.  I must admit, I had a lot of anxiety about it.  So did my husband.  He said over and over again "Just come back to me!"  He was so afraid I would die in a plane crash.  I don't know why.  But, I made it to Florida safely and back, and it was a really good experience for me to do that all by myself.  I went to Florida for two weeks to see my son and daughter.  We had so much fun and crammed so much into that two week period is was ridiculous!  Here are some of the highlights of that trip:

                                       Florida Adventures

Cape Canaveral National Seashore

Cape Canaveral was one of my favorite Florida beaches.  I love the natural setting and the absence of the typical tourist stuff you see on most beaches.

The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter

Seeing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was one of the highlights of this vacation.  I've never been much of a Harry Potter fan until I went here...now I'm a Harry Potter fan fanatic!

Disney Springs

Disney Springs is such a beautiful place to spend an evening.  

The 16th Annual Orlando Wetlands Festival

Hands down our favorite activity of this trip was the Orlando Wetlands Festival.  It was one of the happiest days of my life.  My son loved it so much he wants to " ...go back and take Dad!"  I don't know if that will ever be possible as it is only one day during the year, but who knows?  Maybe when he retires someday?

Cocoa Beach

Even though Cocoa Beach is probably my least favorite beach in Florida, it was still fun to see all the "I Dream of Jeannie" memorabilia and the cruise ships.

Mead Botanical Gardens

Mead Gardens was a bit rustic, but we sure enjoyed the pre-historic size palms!  Plus, I captured this great photo of my son.

The Albin Polasek Museume and Sculpture Gardens

This was such a beautiful and tranquil garden!

Harry P. Leu Gardens

We loved the giant bamboo in the Harry P. Leu Gardens.

Kraft Azalea Park

The magic of Kraft Azalea Park was beautiful

My children have since moved back to Illinois and even though everyone says it's nice to have them closer to home again, I am going to miss going to Florida.  I absolutely love that beautiful state!

In 2016 I only took two "big" vacations...my solo trip to Florida and our road trip out west, but we had a lot of fun weekend adventures.

In February we went to Minneapolis to see the Broadway Tour of "Newsies".  We rented a hotel room and had a wonderful romantic night.  You can read about that adventure HERE.


Easter arrived early this year, and we did our usual trek to Milwaukee to see our home church's Easter Musical.  We also visited with our lifelong friends Kirk and Shannon and enjoyed a movie in a historic theatre!  You can read all about that fun weekend HERE.

We also went to Stillwater, Minnesota in the spring to hunt for treasures for my new beauty room!

The month of May brought our biggest road trip ever:  3500 miles to Las Vegas, Nevada!  We spent three days in Vegas, but had a lot of fun on the way there and back too!

Our first stop was in Glenwood Springs, Colorado where we enjoyed hot springs for the first time in our lives.  You can read about that experience HERE.

After checking into our hotel in Fruita, Colorado for the night, we took a stroll on top of Dinosaur Hill.


But perhaps our favorite part of this trip was just the jaw-dropping scenery to get there!  Read all about our adventures of driving Scenic 1-70 West HERE.

In Vegas we enjoyed our stay at the Flamingo Hotel, shopped till we dropped, saw Celine Dion in concert, admired all the flowers and gardens,  and walked around the strip admiring all the lights.

We took a fun bus trip from Vegas to see the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West.



On the way home from Las Vegas we stopped at Arches National Park where we hiked one of the most difficult trails of our lives, yet found this park one of the most beautiful places on earth!

And our final day of this amazing road trip was spent in Vail, Colorado;  one of the prettiest mountain towns I ever did see!  I felt I was in Europe, not America!





In July we went tent camping with the kids for five whole days!  We saw lots of waterfalls at Copper Falls State Park, Amnicon Falls State Park and Pattison State Park, The Black River National Scenic Byway,  and we visited the cities of Ashland,  Bayfield, and Hayward.



I also attending my very first Blogger Meet-Up with Karen from "She Thought She Could So She Did" in Minnehaha Park, Minnesota




In late summer my husband and I had a blast at the Minnesota State Fair and Wildwoods Wildlife Zoo!



This year we had an unusually long and warm fall, so we took advantage of it and went hiking somewhere every weekend.

We went to Hoffman Hills State Recreation Area

Wildcat Mountain

We combined a convention in St. Paul, Minnesota with a visit to Vermilion Falls Park on the way home.

On our second attempt, we successfully hiked Barn Bluff in Red Wing, Minnesota

And we visited the sweet historic town of Galena, Illinois (post coming next week!)

We don't travel as much during the winter because of winter road conditions and we also can't leave our house longer than one day or it freezes up (we heat with wood).  But we were able to visit the kids for a couple of days during Thanksgiving Week (Jackson's First Car Trip) and we made our annual trip to the Mall of America where I got lots of new goodies including my first pair of OTK boots!

As always, as I complete this post I feel extremely grateful.  Many of you know we had planned to take more vacations this year but had to cancel them due to an unplanned medical bill (thanks ObamaCare!  Looking forward to the GOP "Repealing and Replacing" it).  So instead of taking long vacations in far away places we did a lot more locally and a lot of weekend trips.  It's been not only fun, but I've discovered things in my own neck of the woods I didn't even know existed.

I'm really looking forward to 2017 and a lot more opportunities to travel.  We already planned our spring vacation and we got a ocean front room on Myrtle Beach for five days and we will also be swinging through Charleston on the way home.  We still hope to take that vacation out west to see Mt. Rushmore and maybe we will make it back to Branson and elsewhere too.... we'll see!  Here's to good health and no more medical bills!

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

The Flowers and Gardens of Las Vegas

For a city in the middle of a desert,  Las Vegas is filled with beautiful, bountiful gardens and flowers, and most are  free and open to the public.  I'm not a gambler nor a drinker, but I loved walking  the strip and enjoying the gorgeous flower arrangements and gardens.  I've already done an extensive garden post on the Bellagio Gardens HERE,  but I also wanted to show some other hotel fabulous gardens so I decided to do another post.

The Flamingo Hotel has the prettiest and most enjoyable outdoor garden in Las Vegas.  Why?  It not only has lovely flowers, lawns, and garden paths but it also has amazing water features and live animals.  

I loved their Flamingo water fountain!

This is a beautiful water fall that provides a great photo opportunity with the hotel logo on the rock wall and the gorgeous flower pot displays bordering each side.

The water feature is filled with koi and many different kinds of waterfowl.

There are multiple water falls in the garden with all different heights.

There were so many different kinds of waterfowl I couldn't possibly show them all to you.  Here are some of my favorites.  A pelican.

A mother duck with her babies, plus some turtles.

 And what would the Flamingo hotel be without Flamingos?

They also had parrots that you could hold under the guidance of the animal trainers and many, many different types of ducks.

On the Vegas strip hotel, flowers and gorgeous well-groomed palm trees are everywhere.  I loved this long bed of white roses.

Like the Bellagio, the Wynn hotel also had a beautiful, ornate garden inside the lobby.

This carousel is covered in flowers.

The pathway is lined with trees that are all lit up.  The branches canopy above your head and lovely flower covered balls hang from their branches.

Here is a close up of the flower covered balls.

I loved this flower covered hot air balloon.

I enjoyed the beautiful colorful tile on the walk way as much as the flowers.

 If you'd like to see more of the Wynn Hotel, check out this post HERE.  I have their fountains and unique ceilings in that post.

Another hotel that has amazing outdoor and indoor gardens is the Mirage.  There is a large glass dome ceiling in the Mirage that lets in natural light.

The tropical plants love soaking up the sun light.

There is also a gorgeous water fountain and bridge inside the hotel.

The exterior grounds of the Mirage are also breath-taking.  There are numerous waterfalls, plus there is a volcano show after dark.

The size of the exterior water feature runs the entire city block.  They have numerous waterfalls from these small ones shown here to quite tall ones (shown in previous post, linked above).  I also really liked all their dolphin states scattered about their water feature.  They have a Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage as well, but we did not go to that as it costs about $22.00 per person.    They also have lions, tigers, and leopards in this area to view.

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!