Western North Carolina Nature Center

I took off an extra day to celebrate Sierra's third birthday with family. We decided to head over to Asheville to do some exploring. Our first stop was the delicious Ultimate Ice cream. I had vanilla cherry chocolate chip and it was yummy! Sierra enjoyed her mint chocolate chip. (And some of Mommy's too!)

After ice cream, we headed over to the Western North Carolina Nature Center. We had all been there before, as we had visited as part of Sierra's first birthday celebration. This time Sierra was able to enjoy the animals and interactive exhibits a bit more.

We started off passing through a garden area and inside to some reptiles and amphibians. There was an interesting pine snake that liked to dig in the sandy soil in its terrarium. Then we headed outside to the otters.

There is an "otter slide" that Sierra took advantage of.

Unfortunately, the otters were sleepy when we arrived

and so we moved on to the barnyard animals.

Near the poultry palace is a huge egg that Sierra posed inside.

We petted a goat and looked at the newly sheared sheep, before heading over to check out the bears.

After observing the two bored-looking bears

and checking out some birds of prey, we headed over to the spider web climbing area.

I had fun climbing around on the webs, as did Sierra and Noelle.

Once we got the climbing out of our system we checked out the gray and red wolves.

Then we headed to the nature play area where Sierra played some music on wooden blocks.

We decided to go back and check out the otters again, and I'm glad we did. It was feeding time when we arrived.

We watched the two otters eat and then swim around in the water for a bit. Finally, we headed over to the large turtle statue to have some family photos taken.

We left as the nature center closed at 5 pm and then headed over to Sierra Nevada for dinner and, of course, some beer. After eating, we went to check out the Backporch

and the pleasant organic gardens.

Update of March 20, 2016:

Today was to have been our last family trip to Asheville for a while, as we prepare to move to Minnesota. Unfortunately, Noelle was not feeling well, and so Sierra and I made the trip by ourselves. As we made the drive across the mountains it became apparent that Sierra was not feeling herself either. We made the best of our day though and headed back to the Western North Carolina Nature Center. Many of the animals seemed to be quite inactive. We looked at the birds of prey

and other animals and had the opportunity to hike on the Trillium Cove Trail for the first time.

We were just a bit too early to see some of the wildflowers in bloom, but we did see some emerging mayapple,

some bloodroot that was about to bloom,

and a few other early wildflowers that I am unable to identify.