A Friday Field Trip: Trinity River Audubon Center, Dallas.

Aldous asked this week to go see the "dinosaur museum" but the Museum of Nature and Science is between dino exhibits, and the only other option I knew of was Dinosaur Valley, and to be honest, I wasn't up for a road trip. THEN I remembered it was free day at Trinity River Audubon Center. I had read about this place online but hadn't been there. Also, their website doesn't have a heck of a lot of info on it. It was about 15 minutes away, driving.

The main building is very beautiful!!

Some solar panels. I forgot to ask about these. Perhaps next time.

The walkway in.

Look how cool this is: the big part of the building is sided with wood and the concrete walls on either side are textured similarly to the wood, so the pattern repeats. Awesome.

Inside the main building is a gift shop, and floor-to-ceiling windows on the sides. 

 We checked out the inside exhibit. William was pretty excited about it and wanted to stay in. He said.

there were a lot of really neat things for kids to look at.

 William loved the "trap doors"

These magnifying glasses were cool. Throughout the room are cut-outs in the wall with windows. Very beautiful!

The back of the room. The walkways lead to the trails and ponds.

Aldous made a friend.

Mr. Snake.

"Wow, look at all this nature", William.

At the base of the walk is a cool sand pit, complete with small shovels and rakes!

This playhouse is awesome!!!

The inside has these cubbies, and the back wall has various sizes of pvc pipe to let in light.

The wall that is open has sort of a louvered roof and the bottom half has rails of pvc.

We chose the Trinity River Vista trail.

A view of one of the ponds

Bee hives. The presence of these unnerved William a bit, and he obsessed over the possible sighting of bees the rest of the trip. *sigh*

William spotted a small butterfly. Do you see it?

The Trinity River!

This was such a nice overlook.

We stayed here for a quite a while.

Lots of noise!

 There were also very nice shady picnic tables. We couldn't tell from the map how far the picnic tables were from where we parked, so we didn't bring our lunch in.

In the office, they gave us this neat bird handout and a small trail map.  The same map is available online but has no mileage marked on it.

White allergy causing plant fluff.

Aldous had to wear his sunglasses because it was so sunny. (rolleyes)

 More nature: ants! William is practically levitating from excitement, as Aldous pokes them with a stick. (the omnipresent stick)

A view of the other pond. William was unhappy with how close Aldous had gotten to the edge and was freaking out a little.

 Crossing a bridge!

The found a couple of gigantic sticks, which led to a fight (undocumented) and Aldous went back into the Ergo.

Sad walk of a boy with no stick.

Once we got around to the first pond, we saw a truck load of nature.

Another caterpillar crossing the trail. I don't really understand the face William's making, but do you see him carrying the field guide for birds?

More of the textured concrete wall. I love this picture.

A fancy bench. This is along some trails that go the other way, that we didn't explore. We'll check those out next time.

We had our lunch here.

The contemplative eating of strawberries.

 It was very nice here, and the boys ate quietly so we could listen to the birds. By the we were finishing up our lunch, it was starting to rain.

The boys found a sprinkler and used it as a microphone while the sang rock and roll.

 

 Our view from the bench.

Some cranes we saw on the way out.

So, that concludes our Thursday communion with nature. Even tho it was free admission, there were few people there, save some VERY well-mannered school groups and a few couples and families. I really like this place and it will go on my monthly calender. I can't wait to see what's on the other trails, and what it's like in other seasons.