The end of My 30 adventures

My 30 adventures to celebrate my 30^th birthday have come to an end.  It might have taken 3 years instead of 1 but I finished it.  I started out with big plans, but before I even got started, I ended up in the ER for An unexpected adventure.

After this setback I had to re plan my adventures, but still had some fun adventures in Arizona and Utah.  

This included The 30th Annual Chandler Chamber Ostrich Festival

and Birdwatching in Gilbert, Arizona and Chandler, Arizona.  

In Utah the Red Butte Gardens Lego display in Salt Lake City, Utah,

“The Sandlot” movie tour in Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah 

and Ogden's George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park in Ogden, Utah.

After more unforeseen circumstances I had to plan and do more things closer to home. 

Like having Peruvian food and seeing the Ansel Adams early works display both in Longmont, CO 

and the Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, CO.

However, before I got all of these done Covid hit, and I had to go virtual and do the rest from home.  This included watching 30 movies I hadn’t seen, 

building a Lego Christmas tree  and seeing Keukenhof garden in the Netherlands.  

Then I finished with my Virtual Road trip.

 

My adventures never went as planned but I was able to see and do things I didn’t expect. I’m glad I didn’t give up and made it all the way to the end.  Thank you so much for reading and following along, I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did! 

If you want to continue reading my posts, I have another blog Ryan’s Good Eats that you can check out.  I don’t know what my next big adventure might be but I’m looking forward to seeing what life brings next!

#30 Virtual Road trip Day 10

For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

 

Day 10

 

We started off our day in Las Cruces with a breakfast burrito (technically from Las Caras in Denver).  Then we took another Virtual Scenic Drive: Taking a Cruise Up NM Highway 185.

https://www.lascrucescvb.org/scenic-drive-heading-north-on-new-mexico-highway-185/

This showed the Mesilla Valley and headed to the Hatch Valley and the “Chile Capital of the World” Hatch, NM.

Further north we stopped to check out Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, NM.

The Friends of Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge website has a bunch of photos and videos about birds, their Desert Arboretum and their Festival of the Cranes.  I spent awhile looking at these and enjoyed them very much.

 

https://friendsofbosquedelapache.org/gallery/

After this fun day we stopped in Albuquerque.

#30 Virtual Road trip Day 8

For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

Day 8

This day was a very busy day in Tucson!  We started out our day with Saguaro National Park.  Here I watched some videos including the video they show at the park.  I also checked out the NPS photo gallery.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5gf9_c4qlv_DmCL72k8daQ

Photos & Multimedia

https://www.nps.gov/sagu/learn/photosmultimedia/index.htm

 

The next stop was the Pima Air & Space Museum.  I enjoyed watching their flyover video.  They also had videos about some of the planes they have and a couple of virtual tours of the planes outside.

 

https://pimaair.org/about-us/news-and-media-center/

 

https://www.google.com/maps/@32.1390114,-110.8681212,3a,75y,303.42h,82.95t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAfASMMlULEPHJpgcGTqIiw!2e0!3e5!7i13312!8i6656

 

Pima Air & Space Museum | 360-Degree Tour

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uNuBic6pIU

 

After this was a stop at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  We visited this place a long time ago, but mostly I just remember it being a really hot day.  Their website has a lot of short videos of nature plants and animals.  I liked the Meditation Monday videos the best.

 

https://www.desertmuseum.org/center/edu/dtdo/video/

 

 La Parrilla Suiza was one of the restaurants I remembered from our trips to Tucson.  

So, for dinner we made enchiladas suizas.  These reminded me of this place because the food was more like food from Mexico City.

This was our last part of our time in Arizona, but there is more to come from New Mexico.

#30 Virtual Road trip Day 6

  For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

Day 6

Our first stop of our last full day in Phoenix was the Desert Botanical Garden.  This is one of my favorite botanical gardens I’ve visited over the years. Watching this video tour brought back some great memories.  I really enjoyed looking at all the different cacti and the large variety of other plants.  Here are some pictures I took in the past.

 

 Desert Botanical Garden | Phoenix Arizona RV Travel Destination

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcicDvXmy4c

Next we watched the Rockies vs Mariners game on tv. 

This was an alright game for a spring training game.  Along with the game we had some nachos. 

This was individual nacho cheese cups with tamed jalapeños (regular are too hot for me) with round tortilla chips just like at the ballpark.

Nothing too exciting happened during the game until the walk off homerun from Greg Bird that I missed because I was eating my nachos.

We finished off our day with Snickerdoodles.  This reminded me of a restaurant in Phoenix called Chino Bandido, which gave you a snickerdoodle with your meal.

#30 Virtual Road trip Day 4

 For my final adventure #30 We’re taking a virtual trip through Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.  We’ll be taking virtual tours of different national parks and monuments as well as other attractions, watching baseball games on tv and trying to recreate some of our favorite restaurants and foods. Make sure to follow along for my daily post with pictures, links and videos.

Day 4

Our first stop of our first day in Phoenix was the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix.  This is one of my favorite places to visit in phoenix.  I enjoyed visiting because it is a quiet and very peaceful garden.  Here are some pictures I took in the past.

 

We watched a couple of videos which brought back some great memories! We also got to see the Tea garden, which was closed when we visited.

 Morning walk at RoHoEn - The Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PKkvFHG6nI

Tea garden at the Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2987690107936027&ref=watch_permalink

Next was a Spring Training baseball game.  I watched a White Sox vs Dodgers game on MLB Network as well as parts of others. 

To go along with the game, we had Ballpark hotdogs with Ballpark mustard and onions.  This is the same kind of mustard they have at Cleveland Indians games including spring training games in Goodyear AZ.  

I also got out my mini-Angels helmet and filled it with Breyers Reese’s ice cream.

Then later we finished our day with pizza night.  We ordered Dominos which is not quite like our favorites in AZ Pomo Pizzeria, Forno 301 or Grimaldi’s but it will have to do.

# 27 Keukenhof Virtually Open 2020 360° tour

 

 

I was searching online awhile back, and I happened to come across   Keukenhof gardens in the Netherlands and saw they had virtual tours on their website and more on YouTube and since I enjoy botanical gardens I figured this would be the perfect adventure.

I learned a lot about the park from their website, their 23 videos and Wikipedia

 

• Keukenhof is a world-famous attraction that According to many visitors is a place to visit at least once in your lifetime.

• Keukenhof in the Netherlands is located in Lisse and in the province of South Holland southwest of Amsterdam in the area called the "Dune and Bulb Region" (Duin- en Bollenstreek).

• The history of Keukenhof dates back to the 15th century.  Keukenhof Castle was built in 1641 and the estate grew to encompass an area of over 200 hectares.

• The castle gardens were redesigned in 1857. in the English landscape style, which is still the basis of Keukenhof.

• In 1949 a group of 20 leading flower bulb growers and exporters came up with the plan to use the estate to exhibit spring-flowering bulbs.

•  The park opened its gates to the public in 1950 and was an instant success, with 236,000 visitors in the first year alone.

• Keukenhof means "Kitchen garden"; also known as the Garden of Europe, is one of the world's largest flower gardens.

• Keukenhof Park covers an area of 79 acres and approximately 7 million flower bulbs are planted in the gardens annually.

• They are widely known for their tulips and have 26 varieties, but they also feature numerous other flowers, including hyacinths, daffodils, lilies, roses, carnations and irises.

• They are only open to the general public for an 8 week tulip display from mid-March to mid-May with peak viewing arriving near mid-April.

•  In 2019, 1.5 million people visited Keukenhof or 26,000 visitors per day.

 

My favorite parts of these 23 videos were

• seeing all the colors of tulips not only regular colors but also the mixed colors as well

• the lake with a fountain in the middle

• the windmills and wishing well

• blue flowers that were planted so it looked like a river

• flower beds that were shaped like tulips so when looking from above were shaped and colored like tulips

• a couple of their bridges

 

This was a very fun adventure and one of the better virtual tours I’ve done!  It was a lot of fun seeing all the flowers and different colors.  This would be a really fun place to visit in person, but since I can’t this was the next best thing!

If you want to watch the videos for yourself here are the links

  

https://keukenhof.nl/en/news/360-tour-door-keukenhof/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0VXJL1AT4g&list=PLXmB70ZilxL5ssMcQeyWlBnH3ns7IJsxD&index=1

# 26 Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden Home Safari

A while back I thought I should try to find a virtual tour of a famous zoo. So I did a google search and found a ton of videos on the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Facebook page.  Some of the videos just showed various different animals and some had zookeepers telling you about their different animals and answering questions.  I spent a few hours watching a bunch of these videos and saw and learned about a lot of different animals including polar bears, red pandas, ostriches, elephants, flamingos, tortoises, hippos and more.  Some highlights and Some things I learned were

• Seeing and learning about Rico the porcupine, I found out porcupines are Nocturnal, have big noses and a good sense of smell and have quills for protection, but their bellies are soft 

• Watching the elephant reserve. Not a lot was going on, but one was eating, one was taking a dump and another was playing with dirt and throwing dirt on himself or herself and taking walk. 

• The brown mountain tortoises which are from South east Asia. Have different shaped shell than other tortoises. They were just slowly wandering around

• The Hippo Cove had a couple of hippos swimming around and then napping. 

• The flamingo cove where there was a chick that just hatched. 

• There was a Home Safari Snow Day video. It was fun watching Kris the cheetah & Remus the companion dog play in the snow. 

• Fennessy the giraffe was celebrating his 1st Birthday!   He is a 791-pound male calf that was named “Fennessy,”  after giraffe conservationist Julian Fennessy. I also learned giraffes are about 6 feet tall when they’re born 

• I learned about the aardwolf; they are similar to hyenas.   They also have a long sticky tongue and can eat 200-300 thousand termites in 1 night. 

• I also thought the penguin parade was interesting to watch 

•  I really enjoyed touring their botanical gardens! I found out that The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden started as an experimental garden and is one of two accredited botanical gardens in Ohio. Each April they display over 121,000 tulips.

If you want to watch some of these videos for yourself here's the link to the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Facebook page

Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden | Facebook

This was a another fun adventure and I learned a lot about so many animals.  This might not be as fun as actually going to the zoo but this was the next best thing.

# 23 Benson Sculpture Garden

 

On a Tuesday afternoon my parents and I headed to Loveland CO to check out the Benson Sculpture Garden.  When we arrived we set my camera up and started our walk.  I really liked this garden and all the sculptures including a lion, red and blue horses, a big horn sheep, a guitar, and a fox and waterfall. 

 

 

I really enjoyed this quiet garden and had fun getting out of the house and taking pictures.

# 15 Cheyenne Botanic Gardens

June 27 2019

On a really hot day in Colorado we drove up to Cheyenne for the day since it was a bit cooler.   

 

They had a sculpture display throughout the gardens with sculptures of many animals’ a bear, a turtle, an elephant, a rabbit and a couple of pigs. The sculptures were spread out throughout the outside part of the gardens as well as in the conservatory.

We took quite a bit time taking pictures inside and outside of the various plants. 

Also next to the gardens was Rotary Park which had a train and more paths to walk on.  We also wandered around the three level conservatory which was very nice.  After this we went back outside again to the herb and rose gardens out in front of the building. There were nice shady areas to sit and rest.  We pretty much saw all of the gardens except we did miss the children’s garden.

 We had a very fun day at the botanic gardens and enjoyed the sculptures, plants and the train and look forward to returning to this quiet botanic garden.

# 10 Red Butte Gardens Lego display - Salt Lake City Utah

We have been here before and it’s one of my favorite botanic gardens to visit but this time we had to go because there was a Nature Connects Lego display. It was a cool and rainy day. When we paid for our tickets they give us a map and a list of Lego sculptures. We had a nice walk around the Gardens taking pictures of the plants and Legos. 

My favorite Lego sculptures were a bald eagle, a hummingbird and a rather large butterfly. All of these Lego displays were quite neat and interesting that somebody could use Legos and build something so amazing.