Day 11 Saturday Oct 22 West Palm Beach to Lake Mary

Saturday morning broke cooler, but dry, and the day promised to be a good driving day.  At breakfast Kathy Coryn showed us her unique handmade quilt project that she did with her quilt club... a pink Cadillac.  It was nicely done and generated many compliments from the ladies in our group who saw it. 

 A route today carefully selected to keep us off of interstate highways and away from large cities.  We drove from West Palm Beach Florida to Lake Wales and the famous Bok Tower Garden and Carillon.

This is a popular place to visit despite the $12 per person admission, but we admitted later it was a value because of the many improvements to the gardens since we last visited many, many years ago.  The line up at the gate caused a significant wait.  We finally got close enough to get a good photo of the admission gate.

A nice sentiment from the founder of the gardens --

Walking around the gardens while the Carillon was playing was a nice experience.  The scarecrows were provided by local school children who made them as a class project.

Some of the plants were quite exotic, like this blue/purple decorative grass.

Bok Gardens features a viewing pond where you can watch for alligators,  tortoise, snakes, and other water creatures who might come by. 

We found this 'Beauty Berry' plant to be something we northerners had never seen before.

Berry close

A bit further away.

After the 1pm Carillon live concert we headed north to Lake Mary, only 50 miles away line of sight, but 93 miles by a circuitous route to avoid the traffic of Orlando.  It took almost 3 hours, but the roads were mostly smooth and rural.  Many turns and written instructions by the tour planners... it was almost like a road rally.  Great fun.

Once in the Lake Mary Hampton Inn we prepped for our finale at Liam Fitzpatrick's, a local Irish pub just around the corner from the hotel. 

A bit of Irish, and blarney too.

Mark Braunstein, in a state of great relief the trip he worked so hard to make happen is finally over.

Good food too.

Then time for some acknowledgements and goodbyes.

Liam Fitzpatrick's in Lady Lake, FL

Hugs and goodbyes, some tears and smiles with many new friendships and experiences to take home, we all went our separate ways, some headed home, some headed for the hotel.  The 2016 Gator Mog is now history with hopes of another tour in the years to come.  To that we would like to add our personal thanks for the Gator Mog's kind welcome and leadership.  We really enjoy road-trips like this, and this was a good one.

Thanks all who followed this blog of our adventure.  If interested, please continue to check in for the next few days as Sally and I continue third stage of this trip. We head across the southern United States to Arizona and our winter vacation tomorrow.