11/29/00 - Cypress Gardens Cypress Gardens is Florida's original Theme Park, having opened in the 30's, it has been around a lot longer than Disney World, Universal Studios, etc. It was definitely a cool place to visit!
Before heading to Cypress Gardens, Charly, Pean and Beck work on the Web Site, while Tara gets ready.	Later Pean decides to look out the window in her patented "Pean Pose".	We are almost to Cypress Gardens!
"Welcome to Cypress Gardens!"	Holy Flowers!! Check out the flower bridge.	Your hosts, Tulips and Daisy.
The awesome waterfall!	A snail made of flowers!	If you look you'll see a mama bird feeding three babies (made of flowers of course).
Butterfly!	Water Garden - Part 1.	Water Garden - Part 2 (close up).
For lunch we ate at the Crossroad's Restaurant - it was very good.	The Crossroad's Restaurant.	An entrance to one of the many flower gardens.
Tara getting a penny pressed, we have been collecting pressed pennies from everywhere we have gone. :)	The Cypress Gardens Carousel.	Plantation Gardens.
Cypress Garden's Magnolia Mansion, completely filled with Gone With The Wind memories.	Tara's favorite place - the Wings of Wonder Butterfly Conservatory.	Butterflies...
...more butterflies...	...and MORE butterflies...	...there were so many butterflies flying around, after a while it started creeping Charly out!
The Pupae Display.	Close up of the display.	The Conservatory was fairly big.
"Come here little guy!" Tara says to one of the flying butterflies.	If you look real closely, you'll see two blue winged butterflies flying in the path.	Close up of one of the butterflies.
Magnolia Mansion from a distance.	The Butterfly Conservatory from a distance.	Cool tree! We don't seem to have these types of trees in Michigan.
Some of the decorations around the gardens.	"Ummmm - smells good!" Tara said.	The spinning sky-lift ride! Didn't seem to be that bad of a ride from the ground... ;)
Magnolia Mansion - if you are interested in Gone With The Wind collectables, this is the place to go!	Cool staircase!	Ancient legend has it that Tara was named after this house -- ask Nan (Tara's Mom) to be sure, though!
Another view of the mama bird feeding three babies.	This was really neat, horses made of flowers!	A huge ladybug!
Cool, eh? It is hard to capture the feeling of being at Cypress Gardens...	Another view of the sky-lift ride, after the ski show we rode it (pictures below).	Time for the Ski Show!
According to the announcer, Cypress Gardens is where almost all of the ski moves are perfected for tournaments and so forth.	These two just got done with their show.	It was interesting that these two guys were from the mid-west, one of them was from Ironwood, Michigan! He had been down at Cypress Gardens for about 5 years.
Talk about leg muscles! Whoa!	Here they...	gooooo.....
A success!	This was interesting, too. This guy rode what looked like a stool and did flips!	Synchronized spinning on skis, much harder than it looks!
If you ever visit Cypress Gardens, be sure to check out the Ski Show! Quite a few of the stunts they do are amazing...	Another success!	A view of the announcer and the audience.
Although the clown had one of the most annoying voices we had ever heard, he was quite funny nonetheless.	The Pyramid! According to the announcer, it was born and perfected at Cypress Gardens!	A success!!
A tree with leaves at the end of the November!! :)	On the sky-lift ride, a view of the Ski Show area!	A view of the grounds...
The train through the zoo portion of the Gardens...	Baby alligators in quantity, these little guys like to eat about once a week -- their typical menu are rodents, and birds.	These little guys were cute...
	...as were these guys (they are related to the Kangaroo).
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