nature scavenger hunt

We were headed home, even though we had only just arrived at the gardens. Sparkle had picked up a pebble, only to find that it was a wad of very sticky gum. The heat of the day, and the warm breeze, and her panicked motions only made matters worse, and she was coated in a cobweb of gum from her fingers to her elbow to her hair and across her face. I picked out as much gum as I could with a tissue and we had just thrown the tissue in the garbage.



As we were walking back to the car, I noticed the director of children's programming headed our way with some papers in our hand. (This is the same friendly guy who spend a quarter of an hour discussing snakes with us a few weeks ago.)

Turns out the gentleman was designing a scavenger hunt for the gardens and needed someone to test it out. We happily obliged as he tagged behind us taking notes where he could improve the scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt led us through the paths of the garden and had us find several different plants and other features.

The scavenger hunt was far more than a list of things to find. The paper had detailed directions on how to progress from garden to garden with something new to find in each garden. For each item to find, there was a brief paragraph telling something about it - how pitcher plants work, why there are dots on the bottoms of fern leaves, what all the words on the plant sign mean.

The scavenger hunt took over an hour, and the girls were constantly sidetracked by new finds: a water snake by the pond, turtles and fish in the pond, a caterpillar hanging from a tree, a leaf that smelled of ginger, the nearby creek, the spray watering the plants, stairs leading to scenic overlooks, etc. Halfway through Glitter melted, so I hoisted her up onto my hip and continued on.

I was pleased to find that the girls already knew where most of the spots were (the maze, the gazebo, the water wall, the herb garden, etc.), and I could send them running off to the next spot while I tested out the turn-by-turn directions on the paper. The last item on the list was a peppermint plant in the herb garden. You couldn't see the herb garden from where we were standing, but I told Sparkle that the herb garden was where the garlic chives are, and she ran ahead and found it on her own with the rest of us trailing behind.



By the time we were back at the entrance of the gardens, the heat had baked the gum in Sparkle's hair dry and most of it had flaked off.