*Joey and William will be guests here on the blog as they document our Nature Challenge journey for 2016.

The Challenge:  Visit one of the Nature Preserves in Port Aransas.  Choose a topic from the list of ideas and present our experience in a creative way.  Share it online.

J:  We went to Port Aransas with Walker and Gavin.  We saw a lot of plants on the first trail.  We saw a lot of Duckweed.  We also saw Sesbania.

W:  We saw Chinese Tallow, which I can identify by its leaves.

J:  We each had a camera to use.  We were shocked that there wasn’t any water in the pond and we thought it was because there was a drought.

W:  But we found a sign called Freshwater Pond Hydrology and we learned that…

J:  There wasn’t supposed to be much water!

W:  There wasn’t much water because the pond was at the point of its evaporation cycle.  It evaporates during winter and summer and then when it rains in the fall and spring, it fills back up.

J:  It’s important because it gives plants like duckweed time for their seeds to grow without the seeds being washed away.  I think it’s very exciting.

W:  We found a chalkboard at the end of the trail and I think people are supposed to write the names of the birds they see on the trail except we didn’t see any birds so we added one of the plants we saw…Chinese Tallow.

J:  I raced to the car ready for our next adventure.

After we finished at that trail, we headed over to the Nature Preserve at Charlie’s Pasture.  We had lunch and found a nice spot for some nature sketching.

J:  I had a cup of mangoes.

W:  Me too!  I ate everything that he had.

Mom:  Enough about lunch!  Tell us about your nature sketching…

J:  I sat on one of the Gazebo rails and pulled out my colored pencils.  I drew me looking out at the pasture.

W:  I did the same thing.

J:  After we finished drawing we saw a freighter and some dolphins.  We followed the ship around the bend and started on the trail.

W:  Me too!  I saw the ship first.

J:  That’s because I was busy drawing.

W:  Oh!  Remember how the birds were flying and then stopping and going straight down?

J:  Yeah, they were diving for fish!  We went to three gazebos on the trail and I wanted to keep going because there were 18 gazebos but Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t let us.  On our way back we saw a gopher.

W:  I saw lots of different birds, maybe even a pelican.

Katie: I saw butterflies!

Andrew:  I saw rocks!

J:  Nature Challenges are tons of fun and they make us more like the Wild Kratts.  The next day, while it was still fresh in our minds, we completed the challenge.  I chose to pretend I was a gopher on the trail.

W:  I pretended like I was stuck on the trail for a week and I had to pack for it. (Mommy says not to worry, she’ll be sure to check any future packing lists before I head out into the wild!)

J:  Andrew wrote a narrative (which is a story about what actually happened while we were there).

J:  Well, until our next adventure…

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