Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Ruffner Mountain Nature Park

So my BFF has discovered another great hiking spot, this time right outside of downtown Birmingham. She and her family explored Ruffner Mountain Nature Park last week, and really enjoyed it. And I lucked out in googling the nature park on the one day of the month that they offer a craft, story time and animal encounter to preschoolers! To make it even better, Caleb and Ethan's favorite triplets were at story time, too :) I didn't get to explore the nature park as much as I would have liked, since it was pretty muddy and mosquito-ridden from the weekend's rains (and I also prefer a better adult-to-child ratio when hiking); but from what I saw, Ruffner Mountain Nature Park is a great find.

The only problem I am having with all this time in the great outdoors is that the boys are FULL of questions about the trees, plants, bugs and sounds in the woods. I wish that I had taken more classes and learned more about that kind of stuff, so that I could teach them more. That is one reason why I so love going camping and hiking with my BFF. She was a wildlife biology major in college, and she is constantly pointing out sounds and critters and plants and teaching the kids about them. I remember doing extensive insect collections, leaf collections and even animal print casting with my mom when she was getting her degree and I was in grade school, but I didn't pay as much attention to the names of things, and I certainly don't remember them now. I bought a few field guides this spring, and I'm skimming through them when I have time, but it is all a bit overwhelming to me.

Regardless, we spent a beautiful morning outside, and the boys had more fun jumping off rocks with the triplets (while Mr. Al spent thirty minutes taking them one at a time on back-to-back bathroom runs) than they would have had listening to me pontificate about wildlife :)

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