Or actually, grounds.  I’m currently vacationing (yay!) in the Florida Keys, which are beautiful and awesome – and I’m with beautiful and awesome people, so it’s win-win all around.  I flew into Tampa and we drove down (in their RV) to the Keys, stopping on the way to check out the Ringling Brothers Museum, which is actually an entire estate.

The first building we visited held a small model of what a Ringling Brothers circus would look like, back in the day. Even built of of miniature wood carvings (!), it still took up quite a bit of wood.  If I’m not mistaken, it was all done by one gentleman, by hand, and the attention to detail is incredible.  (Right down to somewhat racist renderings of the black figures and sexists renderings of the female ones.  It’s a really old model, so it was rather unfortunately influenced by ideas of the time.)

Look at this beautiful horse and carriage scene!

The mess hall, which had hundreds of figurines getting down to the serious business of chow.  Yum!

Some of the more glamorous parts of show business.   The model both the behind-the-scenes work and the show material.

I’m not quite sure what it is that every girl should know – the seasons were behind him so…?

The seasons!

I loved this marching band tableau.  The heights were wonderful – if there are still marching bands like this in the world, I would love to see them one day.

I’m not sure what this piece is supposed to be but she amused me greatly.

Ostriches pulling a carriage! It seems a bit of a burden for the birds, but perhaps they are deceptively strong.

And, finally, another horse and carriage picture because the horse figurines were so gorgeous!

I’ll try to keep updating while I’m in the Keys, but we’re staying in an RV so my internet access is not at all guaranteed.  There will be plenty of posts when I get home – I have a film camera for diving, so those pictures will have to be scanned in the computer anyways. Happy adventures!