The park has 3 small-ish ponds with a walking trail of about 1 mile surrounding them. Cutie Pie insisted on walking which was fine with me. Shortly after we started we saw goslings near the trail. While this was extremely exciting, it got even better when an elderly couple walked past and offered crackers for us to feed to the babies! (Of course, I made sure we didn’t get too close…Mama geese are pretty vicious, I hear!) Sweet Pea was more than content to watch from the confines of his stroller, but Cutie Pie had a blast crumbling the crackers, tossing them and watching the goslings move closer to eat. We noticed there were 3 distinct sizes of goslings and 6 ‘parents’ watching, so I assumed this was 3 families spending time together. Cutie Pie liked that!
Not that much farther along we saw a blue heron, still, standing on both legs (which seemed unusual) standing on a land-bridge between two ponds. We didn’t get too close then, but as we came around the second pond we saw him walking down the bank. We walked a little closer and again he stood ever so still, then quick as a flash he was flying low over the pond. Cutie Pie immediately found the similarity between him and a pterodactyl flying (well, at least in the videos we’ve seen!)! It was so neat to see his excitement and hear him talk about how they were alike and different! Then he was wondering what we were going to find along the banks of the next pond! This was gearing up to be some nature walk! All the while Sweet Pea was pointing and talking his gibberish punctuated with a few understandable words like birdie and splash.
On the banks of the next pond we found a small beach-like area, although no swimming is allowed here, but this beach had rocks! What child doesn’t like to throw rocks into the water! They searched very thoroughly for rocks to throw and seemed very careful to not throw when they were near each other, which totally surprised me!
I’m pretty sure it took us at least an hour and a half to walk the entire mile, but it was so worth it! In all we talked about the geese, the goslings, the blue heron, how green the trees looked with the new leaves, the red-winged black birds, the sounds of the geese and birds, the different ways all the birds walked, even why the geese poopy along the trail was green! (Sorry, but it was a main point of conversation as this was on an episode of Dinosaur Train (PBS)…) This pond park is also near a major highway and so our conversation was dotted all along the way with “There goes a …(tractor trailer, digger on a truck, dump truck, blue car, pickup truck, etc)” which passers by found rather amusing.
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