Sunday, April 22, 2012

Prairie Ride

On Friday, Micah, Annalyse, and I enjoyed a morning out on the prairie. We gathered at our local nature center and loaded onto a wagon for a ride across the prairie. Micah kept a sharp eye open for "a bear or a deer or a bird or something that will knock your socks off" along the way, and Annalyse kept her jabbering babbles to a minimum and was content to just look around.
I think Annalyse was initially a little bit nervous about our adventure and I noticed she kept a firm grip on Micah's hoodie for a while. Oh-so-cute on the one hand, and "Mom! Annalyse is scratching my neck!" on the other hand. 
After a winding ride, the wagon stopped and we all got out to wander the praire and savenger for flowers, bugs, animals, and anything that caught our eye as interesting. I gave Micah my camera and told him to take pictures of the things that he thought were cool and then we'd look at them on the computer when we got home.

He captured a few shots of these millipedes but he warned the other kids "not to touch them because they will sting you. I learned that on Wild Kratts." I'm not sure if that was true or not, but it was fun to listen to the ripple effect of kids warning each other not to touch the millipedes.
I told Micah that this picture captured an excellent view of the prairie landscape and he replied with, "Well, you know, I four years old and am learning to read." Um, okay, I see the correlation. I think.
Micah also took a few great pictures of some wildflowers. And, being that he is just threeish feet tall, his view while snapping pictures gives a unique perspective to things down low.
But, even though he is four years old and learning to read, he still had lots of pictures with a thumb in the corner and a camera strap along the side. That's alright, the flowers are still pretty.
During our walk we discovered a big pond with lots of turtles sunning themselves, several (very loud and obnoxious) geese that were swimming, and some frogs that were lightning fast and didn't give us a chance of catching them.
Micah later told me that this was his favorite picture "because it has a bird house on a pole in the water and I think it would be fun to sleep in a tall house over the water."
Does anyone know what these flowering bushes are? Wild blackberry bushes! There were hundreds of them and our teacher told us that if we visited later in the summer when they were full of fruit, we'd be guaranteed to see lots of deer snacking on any given morning. I have no doubt Micah will hold her to that and be asking about the deer and the blackberries in another month or so.
With pockets full of natures treasures and my camera full of pictures taken by Micah, our group climbed back onto the wagon for our ride back to the nature center. No covered wagon, no bonnets, and no team of horses, but we still enjoyed our morning out on the prairie!

1 comment:

  1. That's such a sweet picture of Annalyse holding Micah's collar. And what a great idea to let Micah take pictures...he did a great job of capturing the exploration.

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