I enjoy looking for birds and other wildlife in my community. Here is a recent sampler.
I like capturing them taking off, flying or landing. Top to bottom: a roseate spoonbill, tricolored heron, white ibis and white egret.
I have driven past Buffalo Chips Restaurant on Old Route 41 in Bonita Springs many times. The mural on one side of the building is what usually caught my eye. But, I recently read a very positive review of the food, particularly the chicken wings. It was time to go inside.
Sally is one of the owners, a niece of the man who founded the restaurant 41 years ago. He is from Buffalo and is known as the "King of Wings." Sally showed me around.
A football jersey signed by retired Buffalo quarterback Jim Kelly is a prized possession.
As is a robe from Muhammad Ali. "The Greatest."
The garage showed a gleaming mint condition 1928 Ford Model A. It was probably not as beautiful when it left the factory floor. Nor as expensive.
I had an itty bitty car repair that had to be done. (A brake light.)
While I was there, I got to admire a pretty cool Cobra kit car sitting on the dealer's floor.
Celebration Park is a popular food truck venue southeast of downtown Naples.
Our Everglades (airboat) and Big Cypress (swamp buggy) tours were operated by Wooten's, Wooten's is the successor to tours run by Seminoles in the Everglades. The Wooten family took them over in 1953.
Wooten's offers guests an opportunity to hold either a two pound or a fifteen pound alligator. Bands keep the gators' mouths closed. I would have loved to hold a gator, but my hands were full.
While Susie and her family were here, we went for tours of Everglades National Park and the adjoining Big Cypress National Preserve.
Mangroves are usually found near the coast, but they have been driven further inland by hurricanes.
Historically, the Everglades are fields of grass.
A red-shouldered hawk kept an eye on the tourists.
No visit to Naples for Susie and her family would be complete without ice cream at Royal Scoop.
Ever since the current first grader was two, Susie has taken the same posed photo, with the little one getting a taste of the older one's ice cream cone. While Susie posed them, I sneaked my own photo.
And, of course, I also photographed Susie and the girls as Susie took her favorite Royal Scoop photo.
The first grader doesn't want to go to the beach with her parents. She wants to stay here and use my pool.
This is what they mean by a "first world problem."
Nah!
These four Haring screenprints from 1986 are collectively titled Andy Mouse. Haring thought Warhol had become iconic in the same way that Mickey Mouse had.
(Hope you got your tax returns filed by today!)
More from Bank of America's works by Andy Warhol at Baker Museum.
Mount Vesuvius, 1985. For centuries the volcano Vesuvius has been a symbol of the precarious relationship between man and nature on earth. Warhol based these prints on a painting from around 1800 by Camillo De Vito, Eruzione del Vesuvio.
Continuing with the Warhol exhibition at the Baker Museum, featuring works from the Bank of America collection.
This 1980 portfolio of Flowers screenprints is based on a photograph of four hibiscus flowers Warhol saw in a magazine. Warhol uses the four flowers over and over, in different color combinations.
My favorite Warhol portfolio in the exhibition was Endangered Species, from 1983. Clockwise from top left: Orangutan, Bald Eagle, Black Rhinoceros, Siberian Tiger, Pine Barrens Tree Frog, Bighorn Ram, African Elephant, Giant Panda, San Francisco Silverspot and Grevy's Zebra.
"I never met an animal I didn't like." —Andy Warhol
His interest in the animal world and nature was underscored in his will, in which Warhol specified that some money from his estate be used for environmental conservation.
Myths, 1981. Superman, Mickey Mouse, Uncle Sam, The Star, Howdy Doody, Mammy, Santa Claus, The Shadow, The Witch, Dracula.
