Walter B. Jacobs Memorial Nature Park

After living in Shreveport/Bossier for over 3 years now, it seems as though we tend to go to the same spots around town, yet complain there is little to do here.  One of my more recent goals has been to try to plan more opportunities for us to explore the area, especially on the weekends.  Theo and I have been getting around, but it's especially nice when the three of us get to go on a family adventure.

Last weekend it was pretty rainy (and had rained for a few days).  The rain was nice, and we needed it, but after a Saturday of feeling cabin fever, I was hoping to get out of the house on Sunday.  The bad weather meant Mason cancelled his flying lessons with the students he's been teaching, and we were able to head out around town.

I had read about a nature park not to far from us, about 35 minutes from the base.  I was going to check it out with Theo during the week since they offered a storytime, but it is on Thursday mornings when we already have a regular play date.  There isn't too much online about this nature park, but we decided to go and check it out, even though it was still raining.

We were a little nervous that it was raining pretty hard on the drive there and we were going to be hitting the park close to Theo's nap time, but thought it would give us something to do nonetheless.  We arrived and decided to check out the Interactive Building first.  It has some small animals, some bones and shells, a stuffed puppet and book section, and some information about different trees etc...

Theo liked checking out the small animals, although Mommy had to look away while Theo and Daddy checked out the rattle snake- that happened to be rattling quite loudly!  There were two small alligators that we could look at closely which was fun too.  

Next we headed to the outdoor bird cages.  There were 4 or 5 different birds for people to look at.  It was  a little sad, but I don't think the dreary day helped the effect.  There was also a deer pen across the road, and there was 1 deer that seemed excited to have the attention.  I wished we had a little food to pass to him.  

Next we loaded up on our bug spray (provided by the nature center) and we headed out on the trails.  It had stopped raining by this time, and wasn't a horrible temperature, so we decided to just follow the trails and see where we ended up.  This was our first time really trying out our backpack carrier (Hoorah for a $20 brand new purchase off a yard sale site) and it took a few adjustments before Theo was really comfortable, but then it was working out well.  The trails were cleared well, but it was good we had a carrier, because our stroller would not have worked well on the paths.  

We hiked for an hour, and hit most of the trails, although we only hit some parts of the trails.  We'd definitely go back in the cooler weather and check out more of the trails.  It was nice to feel like we were off and secluded- it almost felt like we were off camping back home.  A successful family outing!