Bells in Madison (part 2)

When Mom came to visit, we somehow ended up having an architecture-themed weekend. Last weekend with Dave's parents we explored what Mother Nature has to offer in Madison. In addition to the Madison-must-see spots, we ventured out to two new places Dave and I hadn't seen yet.

First stop, the Olbrich Botanical Gardens.

The gardens are in downtown Madison at the top of the isthmus. There's an indoor conservatory that was hot as a rain forest and smelled delicious!

There were birds living in the conservatory and they had a sloth, too! Can you seem him the tree?

The outdoor gardens are gorgeous, too.

I didn't take enough pictures because I was too focused on winding through the paths to find the Thai Pavilion.

One of our favorite things at the gardens was the garden kaleidoscope.

Inside the bowl are plants of varying colors and textures planted like slices of pie. The bowl rotates and you can look through the eyepiece to see a kaleidoscope view of the plants! So neat!

After a day of seeing the sites in Madison, we were ready to explore outside the city limits. We took a quick drive north to Baraboo. Doesn't that just sound like a fun place? There's actually a lot to do up in Baraboo, but we had our sites set on the International Crane Foundation. ICF claims to be the only place in the world where you can see all 15 species of cranes. Who knew?

ICF does a ton of conservation work. They hatch and reintroduce whooping cranes into the wild, even training them the flight path to Florida by using a ultralight aircraft.

photo courtesy of International Crane Foundation

Here's the current whooping crane couple. And yes, we heard them whoop!