Hunting for Salamanders

After the parade & lunch yesterday, we said goodbye to Grandma & Grandpa and then hustled over to the park for a salamander program.




There were WAY too many people at the program initially. A local school was offering extra credit to their AP biology students for attending, so there were a lot of bodies, and not all of them really wanted to be there. At first there were too many people to actually venture into the vernal pools to look for salamanders, so we had to hope that the volunteers found some. They didn't. The weather the night before was pretty chilly, so no salamanders crawled into the traps overnight, either. (You can see the empty traps in one of the pictures below.) The volunteers pulled out some salamander eggs, bugs, other invertebrates, and a spring peeper for the kids to look at. After waiting around in the huge crowd of people for a little while, the 4 of us walked a little further down the path to another vernal pool. The noise from the spring peepers was almost deafening, but we couldn't find any of the little guys ourselves!






When we walked back to rejoin the program, almost everyone had gone. Only a couple other families stayed. The naturalist recognized us from other programs and told Tyler & Danielle they could walk along the edge of the pool to look for salamanders or other goodies. She even let Danielle use her big net. The kids didn't find anything at all, but they felt pretty special and really enjoyed looking.


































I think the sun shining off the reflection in this picture looks like a bunch of perfect little stars!












After exploring for quite awhile, we went home, put on our pjs, and watched a couple movies. Between the parade (and all the waiting time before hand) and the salamander program, we did quite a bit of walking and got our share of fresh air. We were pooped! It was a really good day - lots of great memories.