Living Prairie Park

Since my parents are visiting, I took a few extra days off. We decided to get out of town for a bit and opted for a trip up to Winnipeg. Today, for the last day of our visit, we decided to head over to the Living Prairie Park and Museum for their Monarch Butterfly Festival.

We arrived a bit earlier than the 12 noon start of the festival, and so we began our visit at the playground.

Sierra enjoyed climbing a "rock formation"

and especially an old dead tree.

After some time at the playground we headed over to the nearby prairie remnant for a walk among the grasses and wildflowers.

There was lots of purple prairie clover

and wild bergamot,

along with some milkweed,

a sunflower-like plant

and even some goldenrod in bloom.

Noelle and I walked a little bit further than the rest of the group and found a mass of feathers on the ground.
It appears a bird became someone's dinner.

Around noon we headed over to the festival, which quickly became very crowded. Sierra made some butterfly wings, some antennae and even painted some big bluestem in the parking lot with chalk paint.

Then it was time for lunch before heading out of town and back to International Falls.

Exploring Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park

Today we spent the day exploring Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park, and impressive expanse of urban park in Manitoba's largest city. My parents were along for the visit.

Our first stop was the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden.

Next, we headed over to the English Garden, with its proper, manicured flower beds.

We continued on to the Duck Pond

and the Pavilion.

We cut through the Nature Playground, which we had visited previously,

and got some ice cream before heading out.

As I had mentioned, this was not our first visit to Assiniboine Park. Noelle, Sierra and I had visited in late May and toured the zoo,

 with its impressive Journey to Churchill exhibit.

The polar bears were definitely the stars of the exhibit,

and it features a glass tunnel you can walk through that the bears swim over and around.

However, there were seals and other animals also.

We also found the Winnie the Bear sculpture during our last visit.

It's a wonderful park and I would guess we will probably be back to visit again some day. Perhaps next visit we will explore the Assiniboine Forest section of the park.

Zippel Bay State Park

After last night's storms, and a restful night's sleep,

we awoke to a beautiful clear morning. We ate breakfast and explored the campground area a bit. Sierra and I found some ripe wild strawberries.

Yum! We also found lots of blueberries, but most of them aren't quite ripe yet. About mid-morning we headed out to do some exploring and swimming at the beach area. We walked along the beach to see what we could find.

It was quickly warming up, and so walking in the water to cool our feet seemed the logical thing to do.

We walked as far as a driftwood shelter

and then started to make our way back to the main swimming area.

When we arrived at the swimming area, it was of course, time for a swim. Sierra practiced her new swim skills a bit.

We also found life in the waters: dragonfly larvae

and tadpoles.

The beach was mostly pleasant, except for the biting flies. Eventually the flies drove us back to our campsite where we packed up our still wet tent, ate lunch and then hit the road for the return to International Falls.