How thankful am I that our little corner of Canada stays fairly mild all year long - we maybe get a day or two of snow and then it all melts away. Replacing this snow, however, is short, dark, rainy days that chill you to the bone. We can sometimes go weeks without seeing a speckle of sunshine. It's difficult to get out of bed let alone the house sometimes which can certainly cause our spirits to drop. Luckily my kiddos aren't afraid of getting a little drenched and are up for exploring whatever the weather may be doing (okay...so maybe I have to drag them kicking and screaming...but they do have fun once they're out there; I promise). To make these excursions a bit more exciting, I have created us an Adventure Pack - an MEC backpack with lots of pockets and a nice big interior to carry our nature journals, test tubes, magnifying glass, pencils, petrie dishes, critter container, mason jars for water collection, first aid kit and lots of room for snacks.
Last weekends adventure, we found a raptor egg (eagle we think) and discovered a cool bridge over a rushing stream made from an old train car. We'll need to go back and explore the stream a bit further, as we noticed some nice flat picnic spots that need to be taken advantage of.
We also have acquired a nice stack of empty icecream buckets with lids that work great for tide pool exploration (because it's white, your critters colours don't get distorted) and making temporary habitats for salamanders, insects or carrying all the nature finds on our journey. We got our stack from a local eatery and I've seen them at the recycling depot - worth asking for.
Todays nature find was pretty awesome (and a bit gross) - owl pellets. I think what made my stomach a little queasy when flipping it into our bucket, was that it was wet and had too close a resemblance to something my cat would cough up. We're drying it right now by the fire, and will be dissecting it later this evening so stay tuned. Yes...I'm one of those weird Moms!!
