Explorers at the Estate

So I thought and thought last night about what I could do with the girls today since they had the day off. Hmmm . . . the zoo, village, museum, Belle Ilse, Hands-On Museum. I finally decided on a day of exploration on the grounds at the Henry Ford Estate and University of Michigan Environmental Interpretive Center.

 

Eli did great on our adventures and seemed to really enjoy being out in the big wide world. The outfit I put on him is actually a 6-9 month size and it wasn't even that big on him!

 

We had tons of fun "fishing" as the girls call it with our nets in the pond full of critters. Let's see - tadpoles, polywogs, leapord frogs, dragonfly nymphs, diving beetles, water skeeters, snails, turtles, geese, ground hogs, fish, etc. (not all caught by our nets)

 

We spent about three hours there until Daniel came up to meet us. We showed him all the critters we had caught and then he helped the girls let them go.

 

The girls had a great time herding the frogs back to the pond.

 

I was pretty proud of the action shots that I got of Nora and this frog.

 

 

Then we decided to explore the grounds a bit.

 

If you look close you can see the girls sitting on top of the bridge. This was part of the 2 1/2 acre rose garden that Clara Ford had put in. I can imagine it was incredible. Now it has all been left to go wild and ruins. Kind of sad but to think it cost her $200,000 in 1926 to have it put in, you can imagine it would take quite a bit of money to maintain it these days.

 

We found a toad in the woods as we hiked along a maze of trails.

 

 

We had a great time walking through the forest, although it was quite interesting with the double stroller having to lift it over lots of fallen logs. Myka actually walked almost the whole way so we could have gotten away with putting Eli in the tummy pack. But we figured he would be more comfortable sleeping in his seat in the stroller.

 

We did have a few stressful moments when we let Nora and Kyla go on a trail parallel to ours that hooked back together in 50 yards, but they decided somehow that meant they could run as fast as they could as far as they could. Daniel probably ran 2 miles trying to find them and we finally found them as I made it back to the Interpretive Center. You can imagine they were in pretty deep trouble. But it was a good opportunity to talk about what they should have done and what they should do if they did get lost in a situation like that.