McKee Botanical Gardens & Pelican Island NWR…

One place we love to visit in Vero Beach Florida is the McKee Botanical Garden. For its size this is one of the best botanical gardens in the country. This 80-acre tropical hammock reserve was originally known as the McKee Jungle Gardens with the focus being on assembling a collection of waterlilies and orchids. Even today the collection of waterlilies and orchids is impressive. I always enjoy looking for the flowering orchids hiding in the garden’s vegetation.

Currently a children’s garden is under construction set to open next year.We could see it will be quite the draw for kids to the gardens. We spent our time leisurely strolling the grounds trying not to miss any plaques which name the plants. Of course the Plant Biologist in me always enjoys trying to guess before we see the name on the plaque. Afterward we stopped by to visit with Penny (who works in the office) before leaving the gardens.

I briefly mentioned in the last blog that we spent Thanksgiving day with John and Penny. They  invited us to join in the Thanksgiving festivities with Penny’s brother and their friends. The pre-Thanksgiving time was spent watching football and socializing. When the dinner bell rang we didn’t hesitate to find our chairs at the table. The food was passed around as everyone loaded up their plates and by the end of the meal everyone seemed quite content. The food was fabulous and as mentioned before we certainly enjoyed celebrating the day with all of them.

We did sneak in one last hike over to the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge. The short 2 plus mile hike through the mangroves was quite enjoyable. There were lots of burrows along the path where the land crabs were hiding out for the day. I only briefly spotted one tucking itself back into its home. There were quite a few birds in area as we saw many species of waders and lots of the larger species of pelican, the White Pelican.

Our week went by pretty fast in Vero Beach and next up for us will be the Corp of Engineer Park, South St Lucie as we begin our trek west across Florida…

NOTE: We are now near Fort Myers, Florida…