Finding Zen in Art and Nature (GART - Stops 9 and 10)

Picasso

Well, I found my zen and I should have known that I'd find it in an art museum and a nature reserve. Originally, today I had planned to visit Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, a former villa and estate of a businessman, which is located in Miami. But then a friend of mine suggested a visit to a museum in West Palm Beach and that seemed like a better idea...certainly it was a closer idea.

The suggested museum is the Norton Museum of Art, which has a collection of over 7,000 works, with a concentration in European, American, and Chinese art as well as in contemporary art and photography. Additionally, it is the largest museum in Florida. Today I found my zen while observing the many beautiful works of art in this museum - works by Monet, Picasso, O'Keefe, and so many others. But mostly, it was Monet that calmed my weary heart. As always, Claude is the balm to my aching psyche. There were 3 works of Monet in this museum, only one of which I could photograph. The others were works that were on loan and therefore no photographs were allowed. Not only did I see some magnificent works of art of well known artists, I also discovered a few new artists whom I had never heard about before today: Oskar Kokoschka, Lionel Walden, Charles Sims, Colin Campbell Cooper, and Childe Hassam. I love discovering new artists.

After leaving the museum, I headed to a nature reserve in Boca Raton - Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. Crazy name, right? Gumbo limbo is the common name of a type of tree (the bursera simaruba), which is indigenous to the area of the nature reserve. The complex includes an indoor museum with exhibits, a fish tank, and a gift shop, and some outdoor facilities including several large tanks for fish, turtles, and other sea life, a plank trail through the adjacent woods with an observation tower, and a clearing for observing butterflies. Gumbo Limbo also has a sea turtle rehabilitation facility which takes sick and hurt sea turtles and nurses them back to health before releasing them back into the wild. I saw some of the most amazing sea life - sea turtles, sea horses, assorted fish, stingrays, and so much more. For the marine biologist inside me, it was a lovely way to spend an hour. The only sad thing about the visit is that the butterfly garden didn't have any butterflies. It's the wrong time of the year to see them. <sniff>

Check out my photos from the museum and nature reserve on my GART photo site.

Tomorrow I start heading out of Florida on my way to Atlanta. Let me just say one thing about Florida: I hate Florida! I lived in this horrible state for a total of 8 years and have visited it numerous times - thanks to family living here. But I could not imagine ever living here again. Some of my complaints about Florida: it's entirely too congested, too many cars on the road, horrendous drivers, grossly hot in summer, and... well, the list goes on. If I didn't have family here, I probably wouldn't step my toe across the state line. Sorry, Florida, but you're an okay place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here.  :-)

Yesterday, I forgot to add my driving stats (because I didn't write down the mileage when I got to the Morikami Museum - whoops). The stats below are a little askew because the mileage starts with my Disney stop.

Disney World odometer mileage: 94,940

Odometer mileage at destination 9: 95,232

Miles driven to destination 9: 292
Odometer mileage at destination 10: 95,262
Miles driven to destination 10: 30

Total miles driven to date: 2,273

States driven through: Florida

One of the weird sculptures at the museum