Day 5.

(Only 2 more Berkshire vacation days to go. There will be an end… eventually. I promise.)

Destination? An indoor conservation garden filled with wonderful (and sometimes creepy crawling) things.

But first we had to get there.

We passed beautiful stone churches…

The ever present windmills…

And a very strange breed of Berkshire deer.

If you use Apple maps navigation like we do, you know that SIRI can put you on some very out of the way routes to cut 35 seconds off your arrival time. This trip was no exception.

If that bitch directs you to take the Quarry Road up and over the mountain?

Do. Not. Go.

Calling it a road is a stretch, as it got narrower and narrower until it was nothing but a dirt trail. I stopped photographing shortly after that pic was taken because it was rutted, slippery with mud and about 4 inches wide. My fingernails were too busy digging ruts into the dashboard to operate the camera.

But we survived and made it to…

I wasn’t sure what to expect, as there were mixed reviews of this small family run operation.

But the cafe looked alright.

(No, we didn’t eat. Food lovers will have to wait for dinner.)

We purchased tickets and walked through the first door to….

A veritable insect Disneyland!

Warning – if you don’t love bugs and reptiles? Come back for Part 2. There were a lot of both.

Personally? I love me some bugs! The bigger and creepier the better.

I mean, look at them!

A mass of writhing Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches.

What’s not to love?

Yeah…

Thanks for that.

This one was hungry.

These lived their lives upside down.

But these?

These fellows from New Guinea looked like dead leaves walking, and were just plain amazing!

There were brightly colored poisonous dart frogs…

Who were hard to photograph as they kept jumping around at will.

Very rude…

Don’t they know I have to blog to write?

As well as weird and wonderful lizards.

How cute is that?

I could easily have spent all day in just that one room….

But the butterflies were waiting….