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This page last updated on 04/28/2018
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04/27/2018 Trip Notes: Today, Jim Herring and Blake Smith and myself visited the Springs Preserve for some picture taking. We started out having lunch in the Divine Cafe. We ate out on the 2nd story deck which has a nice view of the City. After a nice lunch on the deck (Fig. 01) we headed to the flower and cactus gardens and the butterfly habitat for some picture taking. For the purpose of describing today's visit, I have divided this page into two sections; the flower and cactus garden and the butterfly habitat.
Flower and Cactus Garden: The Spring Preserve's Botanical Garden is an 8-acre garden
Flower and Cactus Garden with thousands of Mojave Desert and desert-adapted plants. Nearly all of the native and cacti and yucca species on the grounds were rescued from local lands that were being developed for residential or commercial use. More than 400 mature trees and plants, some 20 years old and more than 30 feet tall, were transplanted to the Botanical Garden and throughout the Preserve. The Mojave native plants on display were grown from cuttings collected in the Las Vegas Valley, making the plants genetically true and better adapted to the climate. This is an inviting oasis and provides hundreds of picture taking opportunities. The Preserve's collection has received the Award for Garden Excellence from Horticulture Magazine and was named one of the "Top 10 North American Gardens Worth Traveling For" at the Garden Tourism Awards. Though I was hoping to find more cactus in bloom, I was still able to capture some good ones.
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Butterfly Habitat: Description: Now a permanent part of the preserve, the butterfly habitat opened on 18 September, 2014. It is now open each fall and spring when the weather is ideal for their open-air habitat. The habitat has metal screen walls and can be entered through a vestibule with an inner and outer door to keep the butterflies from escaping. The habitat offers different types of butterflies each season, in part because of the insects’ short lifespan. On average, because they only spend a few weeks as an adult, they will be bringing in a variety of different species, including native species and exotics from around the world and changing them up from week to week or month to month. The butterflies are farm-raised and packed individually for transport to the habitat. This visit was somewhat disappointing. It was the least amount of butterflies I have ever seen here. Not sure if it was the heat and time of year or what. As a result I wasn't able to get very many good pictures. Though there were a log of the butterflies like the one in picture (Fig. 24), we couldn't get any of them to land long enough to get a picture in focus.
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Nevada State Museum: Even though we had all planned on going to the museum, Jim was the only one who went. Blake and I decided to head home. The museum is a 70,000-square-foot building, featuring a 13,000-square-foot exhibit gallery that stands as the museum centerpiece, featuring a replica of a Ichthyosaur Shonisaurus popularis (Fig. XX). This months' feature exhibit is "Finding Frémont: Pathfinder of the West". This exhibit focuses on explorer John C. Frémont’s Western journey from 1843-1844, when he earned his nickname “The Great Pathfinder,” and brought his famed cannon to Nevada. Among the centerpieces for the exhibit are the mountain howitzer that many believe is Frémont’s lost cannon, an archaeological discovery of mountain howitzer carriage parts, modern color photographs of Fremont campsites and vistas that retain their 19th century settings. After spending more than an hour touring the museums' exhibits we roamed some more of the springs' grounds taking pictures before heading home.
On my way home, I stopped at a park on Paseo Verde and took a few pictures of some roses. (Fig. 25)
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