Entries about park

It is Teo's birthday today and the Hobbs National State Park was putting on a Celebration Day which is once a year and has many activities and crafts and games to play .. so we decided to go there in the morning and come back at about 4ish to bake the cake for the kids party later that day...

We arrived at the park and there were not that many people but they had a raffle to win some penguin hats and some exclusive 3DVD case of Peter Attenborough series so we entered that one.

They had a lady to show you all the different skins of the animals you can find in the wild...

There was a couple of volunteers who were doing the back pack game, where you needed to decide what is critical to take on a walk. This was good to check whether or not the kids had remembered anything about the Survival Day!

There were a couple of dressed up animals!

There was a show and tell from one ranger to show snakes, turtle, toad and salamander...

There was a craft area where you could make some necklaces out of wood and natural string ... I need to do show that to all the beavers and cubs as this is a cheap but lovely craft to do:

There was also books to read and puzzles to do:

And by the way.. as there were not that many people there we actually won 3 DVD's!!!!

The multi-diversity trail aims to show you the different plants, animals that lives in the area, they explain the way they are preserving the land and how they are doing conservation....

This was a really nice cruise where both the guide and the skeeper were very knowledgeable and the people on the cruise were very friendly...

Some shots of the kids as usual...

Some of the scenic shots.... you can see some bird nests on the buffs,

Kieran and Uma...

Hobbs Conservation National Park in Arkansas organises a lot of events thorughout the week and we decided to go today as they had 3 activities we enjoyed, all for free: historic Van Winkle Trail in the morning, multi diversity trail at 1pm and a Beaver lake cruise at 3 pm....

On the way to the park we rescued a turtle that was trying to cross the road!!!!

The walk in the morning was interesting and short enough so the kids did not get too bored. It takes you where Van Winkle built his first mill powered by oxes. He was the first man to be known to use slaves as labour in a factory environment instead of agricultural fields... The walk shows you the different buildings that made up the site ....

The kids had fun:

These are the few things we saw : Teo is sitting on the original toilet, the white flowers are the dogwood tree and are just beautiful in spring, the red flowers are from the paw paw tree which produces a delicious fruit at the end of summer, the tree with the kind of spider web is in fact house for a lot of caterpillars that will come out during the summer.

Some pictures of Uma and Kieran

Today we decided to visit the Pea Ridge National Military Park not too far away...

This is again a very interesting museum with a lot of artefacts and testimonies of the soldiers who fought during the Civil War... Missouri was a key state during the war as it was the state located between the northern states in the Union and the southern states the Confederates. The Northern states were for the abolition of slavery whilst the Southern states were pro slavery.

The Unionists decided that if they were to take the Missouri state they will be able to slip the Confederates states in 2 even further using the Mississippi river. Pea Ridge is where the Civil War sort of went in favour of the Union as they won the war.

There is a 7 miles drive you can take with more than 10 stops where information is provided about the war. There is mainly the tavern that I found very informative. An old man of about 70 volunteers every day and dresses up like a unionist and talks about the war and what they used the tavern for. This was like a hospital and you can see some nice Halloween chopped up legs and arms,. all the drugs they used ... the natural plants they also used ...

The place is pretty much as was before apart from the farms have been destroyed, but the canons are still standing and it is amazing site.