Blog for adaysouting.com

We spent a long weekend up in DC a few weeks ago and had an amazing time. I admit I was happy to be able to see so many of the museums with the kids and that I would be coming home with lots of material to write about here on the blog. Well, unfortunately my very nice camera will still allow you to take pictures with no memory card and so my hundreds of pictures are gone. I know, I know what many of you are thinking…user error.

Fortunately, my eight year-old had her camera along and took many photos in the Natural History Museum. It was really interesting for me to see what she photographed and what was important to her. When she found something she liked, she also photographed the placard with the item’s description.

The majority of her pictures were in the Gems and Minerals. She definitely gets her interest in this from her dad, who has a pretty nice collection.

She also took many pictures of the giant sloth fossil. She remembered years ago her brother bolted from that room in the museum because he thought it was the Wampa who captured Luke in the Empire Strikes Back. I wouldn’t be surprised if George Lucas based the Wampa on this Ice Age fossil.  She had a lot of fun teasing the now middle schooler about it.

I don’t know that I would normally take the time to look through each of her pictures and be able to see through her eyes what is important to her in a huge museum where there are so many subjects. I love that we were able to pass down our old digital camera to her and that she is capturing her favorites.

*Shortly after writing this, my son read it and informed me that I had incorrectly called the sloth a dinosaur, that he was just a fossil.  After looking up dinosaur on Wiki, I am still not sure.  Does anyone know?

Connect with  A Day’s Outing on Facebook and Twitter!

The weather is nice enough that most people can still plant bulbs.  Up until the ground freezes, you can get bulbs in your flowerbeds and vegetable garden, including garlic and daffodils.

I was recently at a harvest festival and I purchased two types of garlic. If you haven’t planted garlic before it’s fast and easy. You simply break the bulb apart into separate cloves and plant each clove 3 inches down and 5 inches apart.  Each clove grows into a bulb and it’s well worth the little amount of space that they take up.  I love buying specific types of garlic at festivals and farmers’ markets, but I have also simply planted garlic I bought at the grocery store.  I know I am taking my chances with this method, since grocery store garlic wasn’t grown in Virginia and may not make it through our winters, but I haven’t had any problems in the past.

As for daffodils, I have hundreds growing around the yard.  With so many amazing varieties available, I can’t help but plant a dozen or so new ones each year.  I tuck daffodils behind and between my perennials.  This way when the foliage of the daffodils is dying they are hidden by the new growth of the other plants. Look for new and different types of daffodils at fall farmers’ markets and through specialty growers, like our local grower Brent and Becky’s Bulbs.

Connect with  A Day’s Outing on Facebook and Twitter!

I was wandering down by a pond with my son. We were skipping rocks and having a great time. Then he asked me one of those questions that I had never really thought much about… “Are frogs and toads the same thing?”

Now I knew that they weren’t the same thing.  I have seen plenty of frogs and toads in the wild and in exhibits at aquariums, like the amazing poison dart frogs at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. But I had to confess that I did not know exactly what made frogs different from toads.

Here’s what I found out:
Toads:
Do not need to live near water to survive
Have rough, dry, bumpy skin
Have a wider body
Have lower, football shaped eyes
Have shorter, less powerful hind legs
Will run or take small hops rather than jump
Do not have many predators. (Lucky for them, toad’s skin lets out a bitter taste and smell that burns the eyes and nostrils of its predators, much like a skunk does.)

Frogs:
Need to live near water
Have smooth, moist skin that makes them look “slimy”.
Have a narrow body
Have higher, rounder, bulgier eyes
Have longer hind legs
Take long high jumps
Have many predators (Sad for them.)

One more fun fact…. Frogs and toads, (and salamanders) do not chew their food; instead they press their eyeballs down on the roof of their mouth to swallow food whole.

Who knew?

Connect with  A Day’s Outing on Facebook and Twitter!

Like many families, we are a family of huge football fans.  Every year we try to figure out how to take the kids as affordably as possible to see an NFL game and a few college games.  Making it affordable is tough.  One of the best things we did was when we turned going to see a Falcons game into a mini vacation over a long weekend.

My husband found very reasonable, albeit nose bleed, tickets from RazorGator.  I researched a few fun outings in Atlanta.  Atlanta is a great city to visit with tons of fun for kids.  I was dying to visit the Georgia Aquarium, so that was first on my list.  My brother-in-law also suggested the World of Coca-Cola, I found a great city park and finally no visit would have been complete without a visit to The Varsity.

We had a great weekend.  We left right after school on Friday and drove through to my brother in law’s house on the outskirts of Atlanta.  Saturday morning we got up and had early brunch at The Varsity.  My kids loved it.  Open since 1928, it’s the world’s largest drive-in restaurant.  We then headed over to the World of Coca-Cola and spent about an hour there.  The tasting of 60 different Coke products at the end was great.  We then headed over to the Georgia Aquarium, it was just as amazing as I knew it would be.  The Asian otters and beluga whales were so fun to watch.  There is also a 100-foot-long acrylic tunnel you can walk through with huge whale sharks and Nanta, the only manta ray in an aquarium in the U.S.  It was the highlight of the weekend for me.

The following morning, the weather was beautiful and we headed out to a beautiful downtown park before the game decked out in all of our Falcon gear.  The pre-game celebration outside the Georgia Dome was tons of fun.  When we entered the stadium and climbed higher and higher into the stands, my son turned to my husband and said, “Sweet!  Dad, how’d you get the seats all the way in the top?”  We had a great time…

Connect with  A Day’s Outing on Facebook and Twitter!

Family Friendly Restaurants in Atlanta!

I was asked a seemingly simple question by my eight year old daughter while we were visiting a park – “What is the difference between and butterfly and a moth?”  I had to confess that I didn’t know the exact differences, but I could tell them apart when I saw one. She didn’t think that was good enough, so we did some research when we got home.

Here’s what we found out:

There are approximately 140,000 species of butterflies and moths worldwide. There’s no hard and fast line that divides butterflies from moths, but in general:

-Butterflies generally rest with their wings held upright; moths spread them out.
-Butterflies have knobbed antennae. Moth antennae range from straight filaments to feathery or branched antennae.
-Butterflies have smooth, slender bodies and moths tend to be plump and fuzzy.
-Most butterflies fly during the day; most moths fly at night.

If you want to learn more about butterflies and moths, you can visit one of the amazing butterfly gardens and conservatories across the country.  You can wander through an outside garden and see dozens of different species of butterflies on native plants.  There are also conservatories to visit where you wander through a tropical greenhouse filled with spectacular moths and butterflies. Here are a few to consider:

Butterfly Kapers, Douthat State Park, VA

Butterfly Bungalows, Douthat State Park, VA

Children’s Colonial Garden, Leesburg, VA

Virginia Zoo, Norfolk, VA

Butterfly Pavilion, Washington D.C.

Salisbury Zoo and Park, Salisbury, MD

Butterflies:

Moths:

While in Washington D.C. on a business trip, I was finally able to visit the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. We have a small koi pond and so I was very interested to see the park. The park has 14-acres devoted to the propagation and display of water lilies. Surrounding the park on three sides is the 77-acre Kenilworth Marsh, a restored tidal wetland.  I also knew that the gardens and the marsh offer excellent birding opportunities and a chance for me to cross off a few more birds in my North American Bird Guide.  The park was beautiful and very serene with walkways all through the holding ponds.  There were tons of frogs, dragonflies, butterflies, huge crayfish and birds.

The Lotus and Waterlily Festival on July 18th this year from 10-3 is their biggest event. There are workshops, greenhouse tours and garden tours.  It also features Asian cultural events focused on the lotus.

As a word of caution, this is not the place to visit in the early evening without a lot of bug spray, nor would it be very interesting in the winter unless you are really into birding as all the lilies and lotuses are dormant.  The park is also in a very urban tough part of town.  Make sure your car is locked, valuables are out of site, and you are aware of your surroundings.  While I love the Metro, this is a place I would drive to.

Paddle Boarding is fun, really fun for all ages.  Paddle Boards are like long surf boards that you stand on and use a very long canoe like paddle.  With another family this weekend we rented two of them from a great family owned company in the Outer Banks, Outer Banks Stand Up Paddle.  They delivered the boards right to the house we were staying in.  After 15 minutes of instruction, we were off.  We initially brought the boards to the shallow sound and it was perfect for getting the feel of the boards and great for the kids.  The adults in our group had a much harder time learning to hold their balance, although I would have to say I was the best at it :).  All of the kids were able to stand and paddle and my son loved paddling his sister and her friend all around.  It was also great fun for them to play “king of the mountain”.

We then brought the boards to the ocean.  The waves were very high and rough coming in and so we didn’t allow the kids to try them again.  Once we got past the break, the water was smooth and perfect.  We were able to easily stand and paddle, it was so quiet and the dolphins would come in very close to us.  I did make a critical mistake and I did not account for the wind at my back which pushed us very far out.  I took me just under an hour to paddle back in and days later I have muscles that hurt that I didn’t know I have, or don’t have.

All in all, it was great fun for our whole group and I can’t recommend trying it enough.  I can’t wait to do it again when we are in the crystal clear shallow waters of the Florida Keys.

Connect with  A Day’s Outing on Facebook and Twitter!

It’s that time of year to get out and visit your local farmer’s market.  You’ll find beautiful vegetables, fruit, flowers, cheeses, meats, eggs and much, much more at farmers’ markets near you.

Here are some great reasons I like to try to by local and fresh when I can-

-Locally grown and produced foods are wonderfully fresh and delicious….. local farmers often pick and sell within 24 hours.
-Buying local gives you freedom of choice for your health and nutrition….. you know where your food comes from.
-You can try new and unusual produce….. just ask the farmer their favorite way of preparing what they grow.
-Local farmers can offer produce grown for its great taste….. not grown to stay “fresh” on a supermarket shelf for days and days.
-Buying local helps the environment….. on average conventionally grown food travels 2,000 miles from field to plate.
-You can support family farmers….. each local food purchase helps keep your surrounding communities strong.

So grab your favorite shopping bag and visit a local farmers’ market or two.  You’ll be amazed at what you will find.

A very good friend called me with an idea to pack our children in the car for a day trip to Maymont in Richmond, Virginia. I thought it could be a lot to have all five kids in the car for the drive, but I was up for it if my friend was.

Maymont is one of those amazing places with a historic mansion, a formal Italian garden, a Japanese garden, a wildlife center and nature walk.  It has something for everyone, and it is free, with donations accepted to support the ongoing operations.  Now, I thought my 10-year-old son was going to love the eagles and bears the most, but to my amazement it was the Japanese garden that blew him away.  Imagine an insanely active boy coming to a stop, slowly sitting down on a stone, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.  He sat there for a minute or two and then opened his eyes, looked around, smiled at me and said that this was his favorite place.  He asked me if we can have a Japanese garden at our house.  While that’s not really a possibility, I have told him we can certainly go back to visit Maymont’s garden any time he wants.

Every spring wildflowers burst to life along roadways, in meadows, on hillsides and across the forest floor.  In celebration of this beauty, May 4th – 11th has been declared National Wildflower Week.  There are many outings you can take to enjoy the beauty of spring.  You might consider a hike in the woods, a gardening symposium, a floral display workshop or maybe have fun being outside and planting a few native flowers in your own garden.

Wildflowers Along Carroll County’s Stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway - Virginia

Artisan Demonstrations at Tamarack – West Virginia

Below are just a few from my garden-