Monarch Butterfly Festival!!

Mr. Old Glory is on vacation this week, so I twisted his arm and made him take me to the Monarch Butterfly Festival! Actually he was happy to go! We haven't been since our daughter was little, so I was pretty excited to go. We saw a sign for it by chance on Friday, so we were meant to go!

It's held at a really lovely nature preserve, with a little waterfall....

and lots of wildlife, like geese and ducks, and you could go canoeing for $5, which seemed a really good deal, but we didn't go.

Here's the first butterfly we saw! Isn't she adorable? We saw lots of little girls dressed as butterflies.

Here is the sign leading into the tent. We were lucky that we got there when we did, because there was only a 5 minute wait to get in.

Look at those gorgeous zinnias just covered in butterflies!

There were all kind of beautiful flowers inside the tent for the butterflies to land on, like zinnias, asters, sedum, marigolds. It was a riot of color!

Here's my first encounter.


I would love to know what it was that Mr. Old Glory smeared on his head before we got here, because they loved landing on his head!

I wanted to take this one home! I don't think I've seen any monarchs in my garden this year.
Note to self: Color your hair regularly, once a month. It may look ok at home, but outside, you can see every. gray. hair!!

When we got out of the tent, we saw several escapees flying around, and I wonder if this was how they made their escape, on peoples' legs!



This is the butterfly garden at the nature preserve. Aren't those sculptures gorgeous?

There was also a Bug Zoo that I was excited to see. I would have liked to hold this tarantula, but I heard the girl running it say that she was ok with being the one to hold it because she's been bitten before!

And these are Madagascar beetles! They were huge, and again, I would have liked to hold one, but I heard the girl say that they might have mites on them. No thanks! Well, it was a beautiful day, spent outside with my guy. Now let's see, what can I get him to do next.....