22 August - Grand Rapids, Michigan to see Frederik Meijers gardens

http://www.meijergardens.org/

I went to the Meijer Gardens which are in Grand Rapids Michigan on the way up to
the upper peninsula. It had Dale Chihuly which is a glass artist I have a lot of
respect for. Since it was their 15th birthday, he did 15 designs and they were
scattered around the gardens and their conservatory. Even without the Chihuly
stuff it still would have been ace. The other statues, especially The American
Horse, was just great. There are actually 3 American Horses of different sizes
on the same site. The conservatory is like our Mt Cootha with a tropical,
cactus, orchid house, and carnivorous plant sections. The wetland area was
absolutely beautiful.

At the end we had to vote, which was simple. You get a tear apart sheet which has things like "Best colour" "best design" on each square, and something like a postbox with 15 slots - 1 for each of the sites where Chihuly had made over. I think by recollection we only had time to visit 8 of them.

After that we met Jeff's friend Amy and we went to a Japanese teppanyaki place, only they call it Hibachi here. There was too much food, but was delicious and entertaining such as the part where the chef flipped a raw egg on his spatula several times, before throwing it up high and letting it crack right in half on the edge of the spatula onto the hotplate. What a legend.

It's kinda freaky that it is still broad daylight at 8pm here...