Fort Whyte

Yesterday was one of those perfect days that you just have to get out and do something fun; and fun for us was a visit to the Fort Whyte center. Fort Whyte is a natural land preservation with lots of sights to see. Nolan has recently become interested in identifying different types of birds, so we went on the bird tour.

First we started our visit off by a visit to the Prairie Dogs. Where I grew up Prairie Dog were called gophers and people shot them for entertainment; so it is always a little odd to me that the Prairie Dogs are the main attraction of the day. Anyhow, while our kids were watching the Prairie Dog we enjoyed a nice picnic lunch. It was easy to tell that the P.D. had been feed once or twice before, because as soon as they saw that the kids had food in their hands, they ran over and started the chirp at the kids. They we quickly rewarded for their efforts as my totally selfless Jarom was willing to share his watermelon with them.

After the picnic we headed off down the path and were rewarded when we stopped by a little pond to see a mother goose and her goslings. We watched them for awhile and just as we were about to move on another goose came and tried to invade the mother gooses territory. That mother goose when after that other goose in such a fashion that sent everyone hearts a pump'in. I was just glad that it wasn't my Jarom she was going after.

Further down our path we were able to get a good look at the buffalo and then it was off to the tree house. The kids had the best time climbing up and down the tree house and looking at the view from way up; they were able to see lots of bones which they quickly decided must be dead buffalo bones.

Then to cool off we dipped our feet in the water, it was a little nasty, but it felt so good I didn't much care. Greg had all the other kids convinced fishes were eating his toes, then all of a sudden all the kids were getting their toes nibbled. After our little dip in the pond we went to the bird feeling area and tried to see some birds. This was sort of a lost cause due to the fact that we had 6 kids. Quite and kids just do not go hand in hand.

We all had the greatest time and just to add the icing on the cake we stopped off at the local Dairy Queen for an ice-cream treat. Yum Yum!