Enjoying Nature

We spent a couple of days enjoying nature and animals this week. Dominic and I are not outdoorsy, meaning we don't do a lot of outdoor sports, but we love to be outside when the weather is nice (I'm less tolerant of extreme temperatures as I get older). Unfortunately I forgot the camera for our outings.

Antelope Island: We visited Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake for the first time. The lack of trees surprised me. We hiked up a little bluff, and Elisa walked about half the way. Dominic thought it was cute that I pointed out buffalo chips to the kids, but they avoided stepping in them after that.

We tried to go to the beach, but we couldn't find the trail and ended up following an animal path, where we saw a bobcat (yikes!). Luckily it wanted to avoid us and quickly disappeared. Since it is near the end of the dry season, the beach was quite expansive, and we never came close to the water. But in the sand we saw a lot of animal tracks: rabbit, bobcat, fox, and the path of a running antelope. Speaking of animals, we actually saw a pronghorn deer, jackrabbits, the bobcat, several buffalo, and countless water birds. Oh, and I saw brine shrimp (aka sea-monkeys) for the first time.

Hogle Zoo: The weather was still nice, and we hadn't seen enough wildlife, so 2 days later we visited the zoo. We saw the bobcat better on the island than at the zoo; scary! Dominic finally got to see the Pallas cat awake. It looked like a very fluffy house cat, and it kept eyeing the birds flying outside the cage.

The funniest thing I saw was Sammy and Benjamin walking around like monkeys. Dominic asked Elisa what the cougars were, and she said, "tat?" But just moments earlier she was saying, "tat tat tat tat," her word for cat. She got out of the stroller at one point, and Sammy quickly sat in her seat. Lisy pushed her big brother around the giraffe house, and they both laughed a lot.