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.