Playing Hooky with the Hubby

The husband had some over time hours this week, so Tuesday he took most of the day off and we played hooky! The weather was soooo beautiful and we took advantage by checking out the Cypress Grove Nature Park. Admittedly, it wasn't quite what we thought it would be based on other people's descriptions, but we had a great time anyway.


The park is basically a two mile board walk through a kind of swamp and along the way there are different trees and plants with plaques to let you know what they are. We saw these cool tiny tree buds coming up through the ground and we decided that they were probably tree creatures that come out of the ground at night. 


We also heard that there are a lot of raccoons out there, but alas we found none. Mr. Adventure was pretty disappointed about that, but he recovered when we spotted a creature far across the giant pond/lake. From our vantage point, we couldn't tell what it was but it looked large and white and creepy. After a lot of staring, we finally decided it was a heron because of the noises it made and Mr. Adventure thought he saw it ruffle it's feathers. 


From there we found the bird preserve and you can see all of these great birds up close. We saw a Golden Eagle(hello Rescuer's Down Under!), a Bald Eagle, some hawks, and owls. We even came across these Barred Owls that we sitting together on their perch about 1 foot away from us through the glass. They just looked at us and we looked at them and they watched us where ever we moved. It was so cool to watch. I found out later that Barred Owls often mate for life, so chances are they were partners like me and Mr. Adventure!


At the end of the hike, we found another heron hunting for lunch. We creeped around as slowly as we could, but he still heard us an flew across the lake with a bird in it's mouth(which I got on video). 


After our hike ended, we stopped off to watch The Lorax and it was the perfect end to our nature day. The movie has a great message about treasuring our natural resources and I appreciated our day even more!


Get outside and Happy Wed-ding!