Sunday, June 5, 2011

Springfield Conservation Nature Center - and adieu

We spent parts of Saturday, Monday (Memorial Day) and Tuesday at the Springfield Nature Center - a nature center building and a series of trails located no more than a mile from Megan and Jeremy's home.  It was so much fun - we saw birds we rarely see and really had a fun time hiking on the trails.

                        Posing on the frog who is guarding the entrance to the Nature Center.
The cardinals would fly in and eat from the bird feeders all the time - they are beautiful birds as you can tell if you enlarge the photo.
We don't think we've ever seen an Indigo Bunting bird before.  They are blue from head to toe.  They migrate to Mexico and south to Panama in the winter -wow!
Mushroom anyone?!
On Memorial Day, Scott and Hyrum went back to the nature center and took about a 2 mile hike.
Here's a map of the trails - we started from the nature center on the yellow line and then took the orange trail all the way around until it met the blue trail and back to the center.  It was while we were about at the Ozark Greenways Connection that Zac called us to tell us about Anne's broken arms:(
By a beautiful little water fall
On Tuesday Scott was able to go back to the trails with Hyrum and Hunter.  We didn't go on the full hike as Monday but pretty close - Hunter did great and didn't need to be carried even once!
A black snake was in the trail as we approached and it quickly slithered away - Hyrum said:  "Wow that snake is pouty today!  He didn't even stop to talk!"  By the time I got the camera out the snake was off into the brush.
A crane flew out of the brush right next to the trail and scared us to death - we finally got a photo as he landed in the lake.
We drove back to Liberty Tuesday night in preparation for our early flight back to Seattle on Wednesday morning.  Here is the gorgeous sunset that we enjoyed on part of our drive back.
It was so hard to say good-bye for now to our sweet family in Missouri, but what wonderful memories we've created this week together.  Thanks Megan and Jeremy for your love and hospitality - since we've been home we've Skyped once and we think the twins still remember us!!  

2 comments:

Dedra C said...

Great pics and I love the one of the sunset. I'm pretty sure the snake would have scared me a lot more than the crane. bleh!

Kristine and Philip said...

Such a wonderful time you had in Missouri.