Trail Center and Bald Cypress Trail at First Landing State Park

Fall is one of my favorite times to get outdoors, so it's been a bummer that so many of the HRVA area national parks and sites are closed due to the government shutdown. Luckily, First Landing is a state park and is still open! And it's at its absolute prettiest right now.

Our playgroup met up there last week for the express purpose of visiting the new Discovery Room at the Trail Center. Unfortunately, the room was off-limits while staff cleaned and fed the animals, but luckily again, the trail center features some other great stuff to hold the little ones' attention, including a cool little exhibit on local flora and fauna, complete with a "please touch" area where we could stroke fur pelts and listen to seashells.



After we'd done a few turns around the exhibit, we went back outside to set off down the Bald Cypress trail, a mile-and-a-half-long boardwalk trail through a marshy wooded area. We didn't make it through the whole loop -- the kids stopped several times, to peer at a frog, climb a hill, and eat some trail mix. And pose for lots of pictures.

First Landing is beautiful in every season, but it really shines in late summer/fall, so much so that I'm adding it to our Fall Fun List as a must-see autumnal destination. What are your favorite spots/trails in the park? Have you made it to the Discovery Room? I'm determined to check it out, so I know we'll be back soon.

A Virginia Zoo Membership Review

Over at My Active Child today, I'm sharing some thoughts on our year with a Virginia Zoo membership. Have you thought about joining the Zoo but aren't quite sure whether it's worth it? I hope this can help give you an idea.

(P.S. -- that picture of Anouk is from this time last summer! Look how little!)

Happy Wednesday!

Pork, Peanut, and Pine Festival

J., A., and I were out of town for the majority of the weekend for a wedding (in which A. fulfilled all of her flower girl duties with aplomb, we are so proud). On the way home Sunday, we decided to be crazy and take a pretty significant detour so that we could stop by the annual Pork, Peanut, and Pine Festival at Chippokes Plantation State Park in Surry. We just weren't ready for the fun to be over, I guess.

For 38 years, the festival has been put on to celebrate the Southeastern VA region's natural resources. When you first come across it, the combination of pork, peanut, and pine sounds a little strange but after a little while it starts to make perfect sense. It turns out there is nothing quite like eating a BBQ sandwich after a handful of freshly-roasted peanuts while the sun glints on the carved wood crafts in the nearby booths. It all works together.

Besides the three main attractions, we also visited blacksmith and turner demonstrations, examined some antique farm equipment, made friends at a petting zoo, and danced to the Hard Knox bluegrass band.  We toured the antebellum mansion that gives the park its name and found some handmade art to take home. And maybe the highlight of it all, we had our very first taste of peanut pie.

It was a really fun end to a special weekend. I think the PP&P festival might become a family tradition.

The Virginia Living Museum

The Virginia Living Museum was one of my favorite places to go growing up, the absolute best field trip destination. While I always loved the zoo and the aquarium, there was something special about the VLM. The animals weren't exotic but native to my home state, ones I could, theoretically encounter in my backyard. And yet at the museum, I had a chance to see them up close in their own habitats, not bounding away or freezing in fear but doing the kind of things they do in their daily animal lives.

I was excited to share it with Anne. This is a kid who loves all things outdoors and animals of all stripes. She's a Virginia girl, too boot. So J and I hit the museum on a cloudy day last week with high hopes of initiating her into the tribe.

But we ran into trouble early on. Surprise tantrum -- hit the deck! I think it was prompted by the fact that we wouldn't let her take her coat off. Oh, almost two...you are a delight.

Still, despite a few squalls, we ended up having a great time exploring the VLM (which was nice, because after paying over $30 to get in, we weren't looking forward to 1-2-3 Magicking our way out before we'd seen everything). The interior exhibits, featuring plants and wildlife from different geographical regions of Virginia, were punctuated by interactive discovery centers where kids can piece together fossils, climb through tree trunks, and examine brightly-painted butterfly wings. We especially loved the Coastal Plain aquariums and the World of Darkness gallery, and seeing all of the animals that have so creatively adapted to life without light.

But the real highlight of the trip was a stroll over the elevated boardwalk that spans Deer Park Lake to see the big stars of the museum: coyotes, foxes, eagles, deer...  My favorites were the crafty (and slightly neurotic?) raccoons, James liked the wolves, and the playful otters made A. laugh out loud. Not an easy task on this particular day, but those otters are seriously charming. Even the most crotchety of toddlers cannot resist.

Have you been to the VLM lately? What was your favorite exhibit?

Backyard birdwatching

The flu is stalking our household. It got me first, and then Anouk. (J., for the moment, has been spared.) We've been spending a lot of time indoors, naturally. One of the best ways we've found to pass the long hours is to sit in front of our picture window and watch the robin redbreasts who have started congregating in our front yard as we get closer and closer to spring. Last week, we put together some simple bird feeders to make the place a little more comfortable for them. Old toilet paper rolls covered in peanut butter, rolled in birdseed, and strung from the branches of our little maple = bird paradise.

Over the past few months I've been reading a lot about ways to provide kids with a real link to the scientific community, and I think citizen science initiatives are a great way to get started. One such initiative is eBird, an online tool launched by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society to track bird sightings. Bird populations are currently declining all over the world, and the eBird stats collected by birdwatchers help scientists and researchers track the rise and fall of species and give them an idea about the abundance of different birds in different areas.

A. has taken to standing at the door to keep watch over our birdfeeders -- every time she sees a little feathered friend come into view, she calls out, "Bird!" and we rush to the window to gather our stats and write them down: what type of bird (we use Cornell's bird ID tool if we're not sure), how many, and what they're doing. Every few days, we upload our data to eBird. Real science, used by real scientists, and kids can participate in it in a real way. I find that (really) very cool.

scattering some bonus birdseed, pre-plague. 

As far as our birdfeeders go, they've been pretty successful. In addition to our robins, we've spotted a couple of beautiful cardinals and several amusingly persistent grackles. And a ton of squirrels -- it's too bad they don't also have a tool for tracking squirrel populations. Our backyard squirrel stats could give scientists enough info to keep them going for years.

What about you? Do you think your kids would enjoy using eBird? (You can click here to set up an account). What kind of birds can you see in your yard?

The Reptile House at the Virginia Zoo

The reptile house is easy to miss at the Virginia Zoo. It's tucked away in the barnyard, which is currently closed for renovations, so it's not very a high-traffic area. However, Zoo Tales is often held during the winter in the barnyard classroom, and Anouk and I rediscovered the reptile house after storytime a few weeks ago. It has quickly become one of our favorite places to spend a rainy/chilly morning at the zoo.

The exhibit is pretty low-key, definitely not as flashy as the new tiger or orangutan habitat. It hasn't been renovated in a long time -- not since I was a kid, because I remember visiting it and things looked exactly the same, then. But it would be a shame to judge the reptile house on its outward appearance -- because the array of reptiles (and amphibians!) at the Virginia Zoo is pretty amazing. They have a wide collection of snakes and frogs, turtles and lizards (including a couple of fearsome iguanas), a few of which we've been lucky enough to be able to see up close (and pet!) at recent Zoo Tales. A. has been all about frogs ("woggies") lately, thanks to a little rubber frog she got at the pediatrician's office, and enjoys being held up for some face time with the frogs more than almost anything else the zoo has to offer.

The reptile house is attached to the nocturnal animal exhibit, and so when we tire of the creepy crawlies, we mosey on over to visit the the shrews, porcupines, and owls, and the animals in the small mammal house, including a teeny tiny red deer and the spider monkeys. The monkeys might just be our favorite animals at the zoo -- they are constantly in motion, tumbling and rolling, swinging from branches, and tossing each other food. It's worth a zoo trip just to see them -- Anne and I could watch the spider monkeys for hours. They're better than any movie, and far less predictable.

Don't forget about the reptiles and the small mammals on your next zoo visit! They just might surprise you, and turn out to be your favorites, too.

Peninsula SPCA Petting Zoo and Exotic Animal Sanctuary

Baby A. and I met this badassed rooster (and a whole bunch of other animals) at the Peninsula SPCA petting zoo last week. Click on over to My Active Child to read all about our visit!

(I love this photo, btw. I think it sums up my focus for the new year. Sometimes you gotta climb on the fence, who cares what they say?)

Bergey's Breadbasket

Anouk and I met up with our Aunt C. today with a very important mission: to score some pumpkins for our front stoops (and maybe some pumpkin-flavored baked goods, too). We consulted with Google and set off...and ended up in a kind of depressing church parking lot pumpkin patch. Waaa-waah. Not exactly the festive seasonal ambience we were looking for. But did we let this stop us? No! We continued on until we found Bergey's Breadbasket and all our perseverance paid off.

Bergey's is a wonderful, family-run trifecta of fall amazingness. There's a deli and bakery featuring a host of goodies, including homemade pumpkin ice cream! There's a pick-your-own pumpkin patch. And there's a freaking awesome petting zoo, too. The animals are tethered, so you can really experience them, as evinced by several pictures I have on my camera of Anouk running frantically away from a seriously friendly pair of sheep. (The petting zoo is run by donations, so make sure you bring a few dollars to slip into the box when you visit.)

I think we explored every bit of the farm while we were there, from the chicken coop to the enthralling handcrafted wooden marble slides in the restaurant area. She was very determined to pick herself a pumpkin -- I turned around a few times and found her lugging pumpkins almost the size of her little body across the field to me. And it kind of blew her mind to be able to stand nose-to-nose with a real-life "moo." It's a good thing we've been brushing up on our animal sounds, because they got a real workout today.

(It should be noted that Bergey's also features a pretty impressive corn maze this time of year. We missed seeing it today because we went in the early afternoon and it's only open from 4-7 PM. So keep that in mind when planning your trip. This year's maze is football-themed, and from the looks of it, worth a visit, so we plan on going back for it later this month.)

After we had explored everything very very thoroughly, we had lunch at the restaurant and left with enough pumpkins and pumpkin goodies to supply a festive fall army.

Mission accomplished.

P.S.: I love Aunt C.'s choice of farm footwear. This lady knows how to petting zoo in style.

Zoo Tales

We've been going to Zoo Tales at the Virginia Zoo in Norfolk every Tuesday for a few weeks now, which I think firmly plants us in the "Big Fans" category because sticking too closely to a routine is something we find boring! We don't like to do the same thing over and over again -- there are too many other things to explore. But we will make the exception for Zoo Tales because that's how great it is.

 The main bulk of the event are the stories, which are always animal-themed, of course, but the real draw is the fact that...you get to meet an animal. And learn about it. AND touch it. So far, we have gotten to get up close and personal with a couple of snakes and frogs, a creepy crawly millipede direct from the Amazon rainforest, and a bearded dragon lizard. (Kids under two couldn't pet the lizard because secretions in its skin can cause an allergic reaction but you can bet I lined up to take my turn. Who knows when this chance will come around again?)

We were members of the National Zoo up in DC and loved it and were sorry to move away from it, but the VA Zoo is a wonderful zoo in its own right and is a little bet less of a production to get to and lighter on the crowds. As such, it is shaping up to be one of our favorite summertime places to while away a morning.