Hello mom! We have a new friend visiting us here at Mel's house, Einstein Pig! Since he loves to learn new things and is quite the intellectual, Mel took us all to the nature center at Hoffmaster State Park, in nearby Muskegon. It had a lot of information for us to learn about sand dunes!
Here is a map of all of the places along Lake Michigan with lots of dunes. The dot for were we are is about in the middle.
Mel fails at rotating photos, sorry. This is an ant lion statue! They are actually very tiny things. We would not want to sit on this if it was real! Riin wanted to find one as a pet but Mel said that finding tiny ants for it to eat would be too hard.
Downstairs there were many displays of the animals that live in the dunes. All of the stuffed specimins are animals that were found by rangers already killed or injured, or were taken off of poachers by state park rangers. (Mel knows this because she used to work there and got asked a lot.)
This garter snake is not stuffed, he is alive! He is used to being handled and helps teach kids that snakes are not scary and slimey things. We found him quite freindly! This time Mel is the one who wanted to take him home as a pet!
Outisde this big window, which is three stories tall, is a view of one of the dunes and also a wildlife feeding and viewing station. We saw birds, and squirells, and a few frogs who lived in the pond.
We went for a short walk in the woods later, after Mel bought lots of postcards in the gift shop. This is a short handicapped accessible trail that was built when Mel worked here. At the top is a platform with more learning materials to read.
Here we are reading about Mt Baldy, the big sand dune that we could see from the visitor's center. The woods were full of birds and small animals and very peaceful! Mel says we will probably go for a much longer walk in the dunes sometime later. We can't wait!