Butterfly Rainforest field trip

On Friday, we packed up, loaded the van, met Matthew for lunch, then went on a field trip to the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History. The museum itself was very nice and we enjoyed a lot of exhibits about Florida's wildlife, the Everglades, Florida's Indians and related artifacts, etc.

The kids in front of Great White Shark teeth

Without a doubt, though, the highlight of the field trip was the Butterfly Rainforest. It was a big atrium-like structure full of tropical plants, a stream, and waterfalls, with a winding path and park benches throughout. Flying free were approximately two thousand butterflies from all over the world. It was truly magnificent. This turned out to be rather a magnum-opus field trip for us since we studied butterflies earlier in the year, so we were able to, in a fun way, review the scientific classification and anatomy of order Lepidoptera. Besides that, it was absolutely, stunningly, beautiful...we were all in awe and spent almost two hours wandering and observing...WOW!!!

We were sad to leave the butterflies, but happy to be headed to Caleb's house for the night! :) We enjoyed dinner and the evening with him, then headed for home Saturday morning.