Family Vacation - Part Two

Welcome to part two of our family vacation!  Not quite as exciting as the first day, but still sweet time together nonetheless.

Sunday morning, we slept in... a little.  After preparing for the day, we headed down to the hotel's dining area for breakfast.  The included "free" breakfast was also one of the reasons I chose this hotel and it was quite worth it!  Very good!  After breakfast, we headed back upstairs to our room and had church.  I think Josh kinda wanted to attend a church in Des Moines, but we (me) were kind of hesitant of actually being able to find our way around well enough to find one.  Josh knows his way around good enough to find the major attractions, but the churches we were interested in were far from major attractions.  If we got momentarily lost finding the mall and the hotel, the chances of getting lost in the side streets of downtown were pretty good and that idea just didn't appeal to me.  So we had a family church service right there in our hotel room.  The kids led the singing and Josh "preached" about Jonah.  It was a very sweet time together.  After church, we finished packing and headed out for the rest of our journey!

After a couple of quick stops at some shops to browse (again, my kids are GREAT! They had a blast looking at all the toys and fun stuff and didn't ask for a thing!!), we headed to Prairie City to visit the Neil Smith Wildlife place (not sure of the exact name).  And here is some of what we saw:

We searched the whole reserve for the buffalo and finally found them on the last 1/2 mile of our trip around the whole place.  They were pretty far from the road, but hey - we saw them!

 

As soon as you enter the door of the visitor's center, there is a giant painted buffalo staring you down.  The kids weren't quite sure what to think!  It took alot of persuasion on my part to get them to take a picture because they didn't want to be too close to it.  Its not even very lifelike, but kids will be kids, I guess.

 

There was a display of different animals' hides from Iowa's wildlife.  We all enjoyed reading about and feeling the hides and furs of the animals that we commonly see.

 

Further into the center was a puppet corner.  Caleb and Sarah thoroughly enjoyed digging through the huge basket of puppets and putting on shows.  Here, Sarah's howling like a coyote. Later, she also sprayed her audience with a skunk.  There was also a little lesson in roadkill and scavenger animals by Caleb and Josh (which sounds questionable, but was actually quite funny), but I'll save you from those pictures!

 

Checking out the weed information display.  Funny how quickly the environmentalists are to call a plant a weed when some of the ones they deemed not valuable are quite valuable to farmers...the people who actually use and care for the land.  But whatever.  After a while, you just learn to ignore their ignorance... um, I mean expert knowledge.

 

There was also an interesting map display where the observer was given four choices of plots to choose from when deciding where he would settle if he were settling new territory.  You were supposed to choose the plot that had a creek (water source), timber and farm land.  Alongside the display was this fact plaque.  For those of you to whom this means very little, let me explain: the fact shares that an acre of good land was $1.25 in 1865; today, you'd be hard pressed to find mediocre land for $5000.  Don't get me started on the ridiculousness of this...

That's one big badger!

 

And one realistic looking snake!

 

The last area of the building we visited was all about buffalo.  There were several hides thrown about the floor and Josh took the opportunity to teach the kids about leather, of which Caleb was very impressed with what it is and how it is used.

 

Checking out the buffalo.

 

These are definitely not buffalo horns (elk antlers, maybe?), but they were in the display as a hands-on experience so.... we used 'em!

 

And this is what Sarah would look like with antlers.  She'd be a cute elk, huh?

 

Not quite sure what this one was, but it was big and impressive so the kids loved it.

 

Among the informational plaques on the wall was this one describing what all the parts of the buffalo were once upon a time used for.  The picture isn't the clearest, but take a look at the second column from the left.  It says that buffalo dung was once used to make baby powder.  Hmmm... you learn something everyday, along with a renewed appreciation for modern day living!

In conclusion, I don't agree with quite everything this building represents as factual knowledgable, but it was a very interesting and the hands-on experience for the kids were great fun!