Anne and John Travel to Florida: #10 The Other Orlando

While walking the trail at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Reserve, we met a woman who told us that there is a hidden gem in Winter Park, near Orlando. She told us that the town has a wonderful collection of Tiffany art works, and is just north of Orlando. We decided to visit the Morse Museum of American Art.

The museum, unfortunately, does not allow any photographs of their extensive collection of Tiffany glass work, lamps, vases, and other pieces. About 80% of the works are Tiffany with the remainder from different artists. Louis Comfort Tiffany is the son of the founder, and when he took over the company in the late 1800’s, it was already highly successful.

Louis built an 84 room mansion, Laurelton Hall, in New York. Many of the museum’s pieces were salvaged from the home by Jeanette and Hugh McKeon after a fire ravaged it. Were it not for their efforts, it is likely that many of the works would have been lost in demolition. Having seen collections of Tiffany glass several times before, including in an Auburn, New York chapel designed by Tiffany, we still did not expect to find such a dazzling collection, especially in the amusement park capital of the country!

If interested, you can learn more about the museum at its website:

http://www.morsemuseum.org/

We should mention that the museum is in a neat shopping area with many upscale shops and restaurants (though we had an average lunch at a somewhat pricey one). We sampled some fudge from the young lady holding the tray, and had to go in and buy some. Mmmmmm……..

We are coming to a close of our stay at Orlando’s Turkey Lake Park, and a nice stay it has been. As usual for RV camping, you run into some interesting conveyances. Like this Trike with a car body:

Or this Freightliner RV that has its front end lifted several inches off of the ground for leveling (not many RV’s can do this):

The Freightliner was towing one of the tallest trailers we have seen. We never did find out what’s inside.

We had to get our RV up on blocks too, because of the sloping ground, and got a little more exercise this week with the extra step (making 6 taller-than-normal steps to get into the RV).

This fellow’s tow vehicle (toad) is a bit smaller:

Turkey Lake offers sculling classes, and we saw some aficianados:

Looking at the boat and the ducks below, do you see any similarities?

We also went to the Henry P, Leu gardens in Orlando this week. Mr. Leu owned a very successful construction supply store in Orlando, and when he and his wife moved to the city in the ‘60’s, they left their house and gardens to the city with the stipulation that it be made into a public garden and that the house never again be occupied. The town improved the grounds and made it into a first rate garden with many pretty walkways, a visitor center, and even a house museum reflecting the early to mid 1900’s lifestyle. A walk through the garden revealed everything from the impressive huge Live Oaks to a Bonsai garden to many azaleas in bloom.