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I had planned to do a lot more on this trip and do like a full road trip report, but that didn’t exactly work out. We got in Friday night, then Saturday went to the holiday lights, and as soon as I got back to the hotel, I got violently ill. No idea why, but I couldn’t do anything else. At the very least I did get some good pictures of the holiday lights.
Garvan Woodland Gardens is a big botanic garden in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Every year they do a holiday light display that’s honestly one of the most impressive ones I’ve seen. We have been wanting to go for a while but we always ended up missing out due to school or work or some other conflict. This year, we managed to make it happen.
Admission is $20 for adults and $10 for children. Parking is free. Garvan Gardens is about a 20 minute drive from downtown Hot Springs. We did all the loops, even backtracking to make sure we saw everything, and according to my Apple Watch, that was somewhere between 2 and 3 miles. It’s a very large display.
For these pictures, I used my Fuji X-S20 with a Viltrox 23mm F1.4 lens. I didn’t want the lights to be super sharp, because it kinda works better to me when the lights all blend together as the thing they’re supposed to be, so I used a Black Mist 1/8 diffusion filter. I’m pretty happy with the results. Anyway, photos!
I also pressed Daisy into service as my camera crew using the DJI Pocket 3, it took some very good video that I’m going to edit and post on my YouTube channel soon, I’ll update this post when I get it done.
