This week’s challenge is to find some Evening Primrose to observe. When you click over to read this challenge, I invite you to view the images as well. Those images were taken on a hike along a familiar beach that was filled with Evening Primrose!
But, if you can’t find an this particular flower to study, make sure to pick another wildflower or night blooming flower that you have to observe and enjoy up close. This challenge includes quite a few suggestions that would apply to any flower you have on hand.
Special Activity: Pressing Flowers Collect a few flowers during your outdoor time to press for your nature journal or other crafts. Here is the link to YouTube: Flower Press.
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #2. You can help your children find words to describe their outdoor time hunting for flowers. Use the prompts in the challenge to create a simple nature journal entry that they can illustrate with markers or colored pencils.
Our May 2014 roadtrip across the United States included a trip through Kentucky. When I was deciding our route from Nashville, TN to Louisville, Kentucky I realized we would pass right by Mammoth Cave National Park! I never dreamed I would visit this place so I was super excited to explore a new area.
My daughter and I read through the Mammoth Cave National Park website and realized we had time to take one of the cave tours.There were a lot to choose from! We decided on the Domes and Dripstones tour and reserved our tickets before we even left home. We have explored many caves before so we wanted to experience a different kind of cave. Boy we were excited!
Mammoth Cave National Park has the world’s largest known cave system in the world so there is perfect cave experience for everyone.
We arrived a little early at the national park which was in a beautifully green area of Kentucky. We went into the visitor’s center and read a little about the park and what to expect. We asked at the information desk about hiking trails and we were directed to try the Green River Bluffs Trail(you can see the many trails right around the visitor’s center HERE). This was a wonderful way to get out into the forest and see so many pretty wildflowers and views.
It was a little warm and humid but it felt good to be out of the car and hiking along the trail.
I remember commenting to my daughter that I wish I could hike on a trail like this one every single day.
There were places you could see that there were openings into caves below the trail which after we took the tour with the guide and learned about the geology of this area we understood more about the caves. I highly recommend taking a guided tour on your visit to Mammoth Cave National Park.
On this trail you are high above the Green River (which isn’t green at all). The river is part of what creates the caves in this area….water, rock, and time. We stood here at this spot for a few minutes and listened to the sounds of the birds in the trees. There is nothing like hearing birdsong while out on a hike….it is like the music or soundtrack to the day. I would dearly love to come back to this park and stay at a campground, taking time to learn more about this beautiful habitat.
We ate our picnic lunch and then waited for our tour to begin. It starts with a bus ride up to the cave entrance and along the way the tour guide (who is a park ranger) tells you all about the countryside and the geology that created the cave system. It was just enough to make things interesting. We had a rather small tour group of around 30 people which I was told is not even close to their 100+ tours normally experienced during the summer months. You might check the description for the touryou are interested in taking and reading the tour group size before choosing your trip.
The cave entrance for the Domes and Dripstones tour is actually a door at the bottom of an outdoor staircase. Not at all what we were expecting!
The door keeps critters and random people out of the cave so the ecosystem stays intact. After you enter the cave, there is a vertical staircase that you descend and it is very close and tight. We had the added experience of the lights going out about half way through the descent. It was pitch black and if someone hadn’t turned on their cell phone light, I probably would have started to panic. All was well when the guide reached the switch at the bottom and illuminated the way once again.
I don’t have any photos of the trip but I will describe a few of the outstanding features we enjoyed.
The first part of the cave tour is in a dry cave, like jumbled slabs of rocks really. It is cool and with the lights on quite pleasant.
The cave is inhabited by cave creatures like cave crickets and bats. We saw both during our tour. Believe it or not, the crickets creeped my out more than the bats hanging from the ceiling.
The second part of the cave has water and you can hear it running and dripping as you walk along. The formations are beautiful and it was truly an enjoyable experience.
If I ever went back to Mammoth Cave National Park, I would choose another tour to experience a different part of the cave.
It was a fun experience and if you ever find yourself in this part of the world, make time to stop and take your own cave adventure!
There are miles of bike trails within the national park and if I ever get there again you know I am going to be pedaling around to see what I can see.
There is no entrance fee to this national park but there are fees for cave tours.
The day we were there the park was full of grade school children. The park ranger said that they normally attend the morning tours so if you want it to be a little less hectic, choose an afternoon tour if school is in session.
There was a restaurant and gift shop at the Visitor’s Center.
Just a sidenote: We really enjoyed the Kentucky Bourbon Trail experience, visiting just one of the distilleries along our trip route. After a long day of driving, hiking, exploring, and learning, we enjoyed a little Kentucky bourbon with the friends we were staying with. What a great day! You can visit and taste at a number of distilleries in Kentucky. We visited Wild Turkey! (Our friends shared their Jim Beam.)
You can read more of my national park tips in these entries:
Please read the following explanation outlining how to get this month’s newsletter.
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This month’s newsletter link will be available only during the month of August so be sure to download it before 8/31/14.
Contents of this edition of the newsletter include:
4 articles focused on preschool nature study and activities
August Nature Journal Topper printable
New Series! Preschool Nature Table Ideas! Each month will have ideas for creating a little nature study opportunity for your young ones using a nature table or shelf.
My favorite links for the month
Please note that Ultimate Naturalist and Journey level members have access to members only printables each month in addition to the newsletter printables. You will need to log into your account and then go to the “Other Releases” section.
Here we are at the end of July and another great selection of Outdoor Hour Challenge blog entries for you to read and enjoy. Summer can be a great month for getting outdoors and learning more about your natural world, unless it is too HOT like it was here for most of the month. Our drought continues to color the landscape a golden brown. The highlight of my month was sharing a few hours each week with some little people who are nature lovers. We explored my backyard together and seeing the world through their eyes was amazing. You can read about our adventures in the entry below.
Our family’s July entries from this month’s study (in case you missed one):
Janet from Pursuing Joy in the Journey shares their entry: Summer Tree Study – Oak. They are completing their year-long tree study with the summer entry! You will enjoy seeing the images of their tree, outdoor time, and journal in this excellent entry.
Potpourri
Barbara from The Schoolhouse on the Prairie shares their family’s entry: Fun in July. They took a trip to my neck of the woods to visit Sequoia National Park and San Francisco. Closer to home, they experienced a loss of part of their cottonwood tree, the tree that they are studying as part of their year-long tree study.
Carol from Journey and Destination shares the NSW coast of Australia in their post: July Nature Notebook.You are really going to enjoy seeing the images of the coast and so much more in this excellent example of combining travel and relaxed nature study.
Dorina from Outside Blue has submitted their entry: Summer Solstice Nature Tree Study for you to enjoy. They are watching a Burr oak near their home in each season. She gives us a great entry that includes some wonderful images, journal examples, and a short video. Love it!
Kerry from Keeping Up With The Kordishes has created a photo journal of their Nature Study in July. Pop over and be inspired!
Don’t forget to share your blog entries with the Outdoor Hour Challenge Blog Carnival. All entries done in September are eligible for the next edition. The deadline for entries is 9/29/14 and you can send them directly to me: harmonyfinearts@yahoo.com since the Blog Carnival website is down.
July has flown by and looking back on it I am grateful that I have determined to keep up with the Nature Photo of the Week. Picking a weekly image to post has made me more aware of the beauty I find as I go about my business…and outdoor time!
Exploring a new area is one of my favorite things to do. Nothing makes me happier than traveling to a new place and spending time learning about the habitat. Our trip to Eagle Lake was just that sort of experience. We found new plants to observe, interesting birds to watch, and experienced some wild weather too!
We loved the campground which was nicely arranged with spaces far apart and lots of trees. Our particular space was within view of the lake and we enjoyed watching the activity of the afternoon and the changing colors of the water as the sunset each evening. (We were at the Merrill Campground.)
The water is down in the lake pretty far…exposing a lot of beach with plants that are growing from the volcanic rocky shore. This is the second largest natural lake in California and it lies with in 60 miles of Lassen National Park. It is in a wilderness area and has its own particular species of trout. Some of the neighbors in the campground had been out fishing in their boat and related that they caught their limit every day.
The wildflowers are very pretty and we enjoyed walking along the shore with our dog…she enjoyed getting wet.
There were sections of the beach just covered in white aquatic snail shells. Just part of the ecosystem I guess.
We saw so many osprey here at Eagle Lake and enjoyed every single sighting. We went up to the Osprey Overlook which had binocular equipment to view the tops of the trees, looking for nests. We didn’t see a nest but we saw a platform where they have had a nest in the past. It was a spectacular view (no photos because as we got up there a thunderstorm rolled in so we didn’t spend a lot of time there).
We saw lots of other birds too: Steller’s jays, Mourning doves, Tree swallows, American white Pelicans, Western grebes, Canada goose, California Towhee, Dark-eyed juncos, Lesser goldfinch, Western tanager, and even an Anna’s hummingbird. (Excellent list for the lake area’s birds HERE.) If we ever go back to Eagle Lake, I am going to take better camera equipment to document the many amazing birds!
There was a nice paved bicycle trail along the shore of the lake connecting several of the campgrounds and the marina. We were wishing we had our bikes!
The afternoon thunderstorms were mostly dry…no rain. But, the sunsets were amazing because of the layers of clouds. The wind was brisk and we were quickly cooled off from the hot summer temperatures when the storms would roll through.
The highlight of the trip was a day at Lassen Volcanic National Park! But, of course, that will be in a separate entry in the near future!
We will be heading to Utah for another adventure soon…looking forward to exploring another habitat with the family and a couple of my son’s friends.
We made a trip to our cattail spot for our summer observations. We are in the middle of a drought in my part of California and I was sure that our cattail spot would be dry. I was right.
There was no water at all in the pond for this summer observation. The cattail plants were still green but the ground was bone dry.
The cattail flowers were really large and the soft parts were much longer than in previous years. What does that mean I wonder?
I am estimating that if I was able to stand on the ground next to the cattails that they would be taller than I am…much more than 6 feet I think.
The area has filled in a lot since April but the water is all gone making it look very different. We shall now look forward to making some autumn observations.
This week we are going to use our senses and do a little cattail observation! Make sure to click over to the original challenge to see the list in the Train Your Senses section to get some ideas for your family to try. Also in the challenge, make sure to read the lesson in the Handbook of Nature Study. If you already started a year-long cattail study, revisit your spring spot and note the changes.
As a bonus for this challenge I am including the Summer Pond Study notebook page and the Pond Study Grid from the August 2011 Newsletter!
Getting Started Suggestion:
If you already own the Getting Started ebook, complete Outdoor Hour Challenge #3.This week you should take a trip to your cattail patch and make some drawings. You can use a blank page in your nature journal or use the notebook page included in the ebook.
June was an exciting month of outdoor life for our family. We took a three day camping trip up to the mountains and were able to complete two awesome day hikes. Hiking is something that fills that need for adventure, finding a spot out in the forest where there are few people and lots of interesting views to enjoy. The first hike was to a lake we have visited before but the second hike was completely new to us.
The trail to Round Lake is part of the Tahoe Rim Trail,stretching along for 3.5 miles from the trailhead to the lake. The hike, according to my sister, is 80% uphill on the way to the lake. It was a steady uphill and never felt to strenuous to my husband and I. There were lots of things to look at as you hiked, including wildflowers galore.
In fact, at the very beginning of the hike you cross Big Meadow on a completely flat narrow trail lined with wildflowers and criss-crossed by butterflies flying. What an enjoyable place!
Here is a close-up of one flower that was abundant as we walked across the meadow.
Here is a map of the topography of the trail, showing how as you hike along you go up in elevation for the most part until you reach the lakeshore.
Some more wildflowers along the trail…just enough to keep it interesting.
This was our stopping spot to eat some lunch and enjoy the view. Although, the photo does not show the hordes of mosquitoes that were trying to make lunch of us! We were glad that a strong breeze kicked up and for the most part we could sit and enjoy our meal without too much annoyance. I wish I could say the same for the hike back down the mountain….I ended up with quite a few bites on my legs and back of my neck.
Here is one more view of the trail side as we hiked back down. This section was filled with Corn Lilies…a little dampness is all it takes.
So there you have our hike…New Hike #2! We are planning on returning later this summer to hike to the Dardanelles which are along this same trail with a westerly turn at about two miles.
I am calling this my “local hike” since it is just about an hour from my front door.
