A wet and WILD park tour

We went to Blackburn Park for a park tour.

We went to this park as our very first tour a few months ago and focused on Sink Holes!

This time we were hoping to see young owls…

Which we didn’t – but we had a Wet and Wild Fun time in the rain identifying plants and trees!! 😊🌸🌳

Bird Sanctuary

Phoebe Snetsinger was a famous birder who has seen and identified over 8,400 birds globally!  She spent much of her time in Blackburn park and when she died in 1999, her memorial fund created this 5 acre bird sanctuary!!

Well- it was RAINY!!!! and despite being VERY quiet, we didn’t see any birds.

But…

We saw where a mother OWL had nested and raised 3 owlets just a few months ago!

  

The kids all brought cameras and it was cute to watch them take pictures of special things! They were in awe over the dead tree being used for the Owls’ nest!

We saw what we thought was a gigantic dandelion and after a quick taste test– we decided it was bitter and disgusting!

We searched for something to get the aweful flavor out of our mouths!

Honey Suckle to the rescue!

Even not-quite ripe Mulberries tasted good!

The very best flavored leaves were the Sassafras Leaf.

It smelled a bit like root beer and it tasted just as nice! 

Sassafras root is what root-beer used to be made from!

🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳🌳

This next tree is easy to identify…

Lady Cigar Trees (catalpa tree)

 

We gave the kids a “smoking will kill you” speech and renamed the tree Witch’s Finger!

 

After the tour… Since the kids were already wet… They played on the playground!

They discovered that they could go super fast down the slide because of the water! LOL!!

Angela also pulled a surprise out of her bag at the end of the tour…

It was a basket left over from playing Little House on the Prairie after a prior park tour.

Simone remembered, after seeing it, that a younger cousin had floated it down the creek with flowers in it! I guess it went on an adventure of it’s own – Simone is glad to have it back!

Since we didn’t see any owls today on our hike – we went home and drew some!

  

• Posted in: adventures ♦ park
• Tagged: hike, homeschool, nature, outdoors, outside, park, trees, unschool