Family Outing at the Botanical Gardens

This past Monday, I had made plans with my parents and my mother's caregiver Ada to go to the Huntsville Botanical Gardens to see the Scarecrow Trail. I had recently won some passes and wanted to take advantage of them while the Scarecrow Trail was up. The plan was to meet there at 5:00 p.m. and take in as much of the garden as possible before dark. 

As luck would have it, there was a wreck on the Parkway around 11:15 a.m. and it knocked out the power in the area of town where I work, including our building. After an hour or so of sitting around in the dark, upper management made the decision to send us all home because even after power is restored to the building, it takes another two hours for it to be fully restored and operational. So, we were sent home and even paid for the day which was very nice! I called my parents to see if they could meet at the garden sooner than 5:00 p.m. since I had the afternoon free. They could and we met up a little before 3:00 p.m. to tour the gardens. This ended up being a blessing in surprise because beginning in October, the garden actually closes at 5:00 p.m. so we wouldn't have been able to take our tour if we had kept our original plans. 

Oddly enough, none of us had ever toured the gardens before. We had all been there for at least one wedding and during the Galaxy of Lights, but as far as actually getting out and strolling around and taking it all in, none of us had done that before. The Botanical Garden is very nice and very spacious. I honestly had no idea how large it was. My dad was very impressed. He loves flowers and landscaping and kept saying over and over how nice it was and he even ranked it the second best Botanical Garden -second only to the garden in Victoria, British Columbia. 

The Scarecrow Trail was not as impressive as I had hoped but some of the characters were well done and comical. It started raining when we were on the far side of the garden, so mother headed back to the main building to take cover. My dad and I ventured over to the butterfly house before leaving and I think that was my favorite part. We spent some time there before heading back to the main building and the car. The nice people at the garden gave us passes to come back on another day since we got rained out and didn't get to spend as much time at the garden as we would have liked. That was incredibly nice of them.

After the trip to the garden, we stopped at Captain D's for an early and probably not very nutritious dinner, but it was still good. It was a successful and fun afternoon thanks to the power going out at work. If you live in or are visiting the Huntsville area, be sure to check out the Huntsville Botanical Garden. It makes for a very nice outing any day of the week!