We Love This Park!

I've blogged about this little park off of the Old Evergreen Highway before but it's one of our favorites so here we go again. I'm fighting another head cold so Oliver was cooped up most of the weekend while I tried to get better. We both had cabin fever today so we headed down to the park. The boys call it the train park because trains run parallel to the highway along the park and they love it when big freight trains rumble past. It's officially the Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center. Yeah, let's stick with train park. Anyway, it's a beautiful park, lots of learning opportunities, a great little nature walk (that a 3 year old can easily handle), a fish hatchery and just plain fun. Here are lots of pictures from today's outing...

When we first got there, one of the very nice people that work at the hatchery told us to hurry down to the raceway because they were transferring fish.
Here is the guy dumping the fish into the truck that was headed to a local stream.

These two had the job of scooping them out of the raceway.

You can feed the fish if you want.

Play peek-a-boo with a pile of pipes.

Find the snow white heron perched in a tree.

View out onto the lake, look close and you can see the white heron in the previous photo, down in the water are also ducks and loons. The fish were also active and jumping a lot today.

If you don't like the white heron then how about the blue heron circling above our heads?

A view of the lake from the nature trail.

This here is an example of why you shouldn't walk and try to take a picture of the loons landing in the water. Lots of rocks, tree roots, etc. to trip over. That splash in the middle of the picture, however, is indeed the loon landing!

Looking way too grown up to be my baby.

At the top of the trail you come out into a big field surrounded by more wetlands and water. This is a picture of the upper lake area.

And at the end of a chilly walk, sitting on a bench, while waiting for the train to go by, you just might get lucky enough to warm the, red with cold, hand of a cute boy.