A group of us got together to go to a nature center for a walk to celebrate K2’s birthday. We had originally planned to go to a botanical garden, but they were closed for an event, so we went here instead. Unfortunately, we’d had some severe storms in the days before and we ended up getting blocked on a couple trails at the nature center and the park we went next because of flooding. We all agreed that it was more about the company than the event, so were happy spending time together. We also had absolutely delicious Mexican food after our two failed walks.

This nature center was small, but really well done. They had a lot of really nice taxidermy specimens and very nicely organized exhibits. They had a small viewing area with information on local birds and a kids section with things you could play with and magnification stations that you could use to examine things.

There were also some live animals, which seemed very happy! Most of them were active which was cool to see. The Husband and I are trying to get back to having regular dates. We missed each other during theater season and I think that some of the nature centers would be really cool and generally free to visit.

Here are some of the things we saw at the nature center.

This is the little pond was in the atrium when you walked in. The turtles all wanted the warming light and we didn’t see any frogs. There were signs to make sure to look down to avoid stepping on frog or turtle friends.

This wasp nest was really big! I get scared by wasps, but their nests are so cool looking!

Look, a beaver! We always joke that the beavers at the Zoo are “theoretical beavers” because you never see them unless you’re there for the late events. K2 says that they have, in fact, the beavers at the zoo. This one was posed very nicely. Behind the beaver you can see the fish and turtle tank.

There were signs saying “Don’t forget to look up!” So we did and were greeted by this happy little possum who looked like he was going to jump on us! There were some birds and racoons too, but some of the animals were hard to take a picture of. There were a lot of fun nature photographs too. Those always inspire me to get a really good camera and go exploring.

There were some interesting animal skeletons too. I really liked the curviness of this snake skeleton.

I didn’t see what kind of bird this was, but how cool is it to see the wings and everything? I feel like this is an interesting piece that you don’t normally see. I appreciated the different perspective.

Alright, the last few picture are snakes, so if you don’t want to see them, scroll away! I believe this was an albino corn snake. It apparently needs a lot of humidity, as the tank was very misty, as you can see. The humidifier in the tank was Olaf from Frozen, which made us all laugh.

I don’t remember what kind of snakes these were, but they were pretty active.

The last one was a hognose snake and K2 was sweet talking it. I told her Piggy might be jealous if she said the snake was her favorite Piggy, so she made sure to give her extra love when we came home. He was lovely and very interested in what was going on in the room.

I don’t mind snakes. I don’t know that I’d want to hold them or have them near me not in a tank, but they don’t freak me out as much as spiders or wasps. *shudders

Overall, it was a fun little visit! We had a good time at dinner and after dinner we just hung out at our house. I really liked that part of the night too. The Husband and I want our friends to feel comfy just coming over so it was neat to be able to do that again.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the write up. It’s been a really, really hard year for me and a lot of my creativity suffered for it, including writing. I’m hoping to get back into writing up short posts at least. Hopefully our date nights will be full of fun picture opportunities as well!

I hope you can get out and enjoy some nature this week!