Jennifer's 365 Project

We went on an adventure together in the cold to a nearby nature park.
He had a lot of fun running around, climbing hills, and enjoying being out in the sunshine.
 

What better way to spend the day then wandering around from park to park? Ok, that's not exactly what we did, but close.

We drove over to East Paris Park after we hit Horrocks to pick up a few things. This park is small and pretty open. In fact, there's now a portion the trail that is akin to walking in several people's backyard, now that brush has been cleared away.



That feeling is in pretty stark contrast to the Paris Park Nature Preserve just down the road. Since we were in the area, we drove over to the reserve and walked a bit over there as well. It's my favorite of the two, but it does have a lot more mosquitoes.


Out last stop was Heritage Park. It's a cute little park with a large pond that attracts a lot of ducks and geese. When we arrived it appeared to be their nap time, which meant we could read in peace and not get stalked. These guys get fed a lot and they will stalk you if they suspect you're hiding tasty treats.

If you've ever seen Hitchcock's The Birds, you know how frightening this scene really is.

I was out at East Paris Nature Park today, trying to ride in the 90+ weather, and stumbled across some geese chilling in the shade. As I was taking out my camera to snap a photo, they spotted me and started to advance.

As you can see from these photos, they continued to slowly swim their way over to me. Hoping, no doubt, that I had a bag of bread stuffed in my camera bag.

Lucky for me some unsuspecting children and their grandparents were stopping by to attempt fishing. Since there were more people over by the bridge, they casually changed course. I'm sure they figured the odds of being fed were greater with a greater concentration of humans.

Today was a good day. I got to spend time with Sherry and Dan, which is always fun and therapeutic for me. Daniel has proposed, twice, that we start our own book club. And if you're reading this Dan - yes we should. Pick za book.

Anyway, today we headed over to the East Paris Nature Park (or is it preserve?) to walk around. Sherry brought bug spray, but I dont know that it helped 100%, and we retreated after making two rounds through the paved area. Natalie loved it, and we got to talk about all kinds of things.

Here's a shot of a dragonfly they pointed out to me. This was shortly after the bugger had caught something and appeared to have been devouring it - not unlike what the mosquitoes were doing to us.

Originally I was going to go biking today on the Kentwood trail over by my old apartment, but the parking lot was overflowing and I thought with my clumsy nature I'd be better off somewhere a little less crowded. So I headed over to East Paris Nature Park, which is relatively close to the trail.

While riding around there I stumbled across this contraption on the non-paved portion of the trail. I didn't cross it.

I always loved treasure hunts. When I was little my parents used to make up riddles and stash the notes somewhere hidden on the xmas tree when my little brother and I were going to receive a big present - like a bike or a stereo. I wasn't always very good at them, but I definitely enjoyed the experience.

So after reading about geocaching last year I thought I would try it. Well, I did - and failed. Now I know that some spots are in mucky areas, or hard to reach. What I didnt expect when I laced up my boots was such deep water due to flooding. I'm not sure why - we've had flood advisories in the Grand Rapids area. But none the less, I didnt come prepared. I came about, according to my GPS, 20 yards from the cache and could go no further. I walked around and tried to get through the water, but it was too deep.

So geocache attempt number 1 - failed.

Tomorrow I'm going to try another one...

Visited the East Paris Nature Park today and enjoyed decent weather with my camera and Dayzee. There aren't a whole lot of green things up this early in the year, but I did find some interesting things like left over bird nests! Dayzee was not impressed.