After Knoxville, and a night in the southern end of Georgia, we headed on to the Orlando area part of our Mold-A-Rama Road Trip where we had three stops to make.
Our first stop in Florida (after the Visitor Center and its free orange juice) was the Central Florida Zoo in Sanford. It's got to be hard to be any kind of small attraction near Orlando, and it's a very small zoo, but we liked it. It will always hold a special place in our hearts for being the first place where we touched a palm tree, and for giving us our first moments of real warmth during a truly miserable winter.The zoo was small enough that nearly every animal in it was pictured on the map, and the only large animal they had was a rhino. They were getting ready to open a giraffe exhibit, and we actually saw the trailer pulling up with the giraffe delivery as we were leaving! They had the smallest amphibian display we've ever seen. There was a tiny building with a door, and when we opened it we realized that little space with a wall with four or five tiny windows in it was the whole thing. It was like a mini-zoo, but everything was nicely displayed and well-maintained. All of it was built on boardwalks, and there were covered areas strewn about to hide from the sporadic rainstorms.
We also saw this on our way into the park which we found interesting:
