VA trip: Maymont Park

Saturday was mostly spent recovering from our looonnngg day on Friday and I think we may have gone to another mall? It's kind of all a blur. Sunday was church. I loved their ward. Elliott loved nursery too. She did amazing. Ran right in and didn't look back. Love her. 

On Monday, Mark went back to work (after 7 days off!) so in the morning we did some brainstorming on what we could do that day. My mom thought the zoo would be fun but we decided it was too expensive. $15 a person times 5. Yikes. My sister recommended this huge 100 acre park called Maymont in Richmond. It is full of beautiful gardens and waterfalls and even has a few animal exhibits. And the best part? It's free. So we packed some lunches and headed over. We decided to go ahead and eat lunch first so we could stash all the stuff in the car after eating and not have to lug it around the park. We found a big shaded area of grass and ate our packed lunches. Yum. Then we started our trek. And boy was it a trek. I thought the other days had been hot, but man was I mistaken! It was so stinking hot. We were all dying. It was about half shaded so there were lots of places to stop and rest, but that humidity just kills you. We hit up the Japanese and Italian gardens first. So pretty. There were about 100 stairs leading down to the gardens so I carried Elliott and my sister, mom and Taylor tag-teamed bringing the stroller down. But we made it! That was the last of the stairs, but definitely not the last of the heat. 

After the gardens we treked up and around the other side of the park to the bear exhibit! And we were so lucky. One of the black bears was out walking around and walked so close to us. There were two fences and he was right up against the second fence. He walked up and down the fence then wandered into the water and swam around a bit. Elliott was so excited about the bear! She loves bears but had never seen one in real life (since the zoo in SC that she didn't remember). She loved it! Who am I kidding, we all loved it! 

After the bears was a small aviary. They had eagles, hawks, owls, vultures and a bunch of other birds. We were all pretty hot at this point, as you can start to tell by the pictures, but it was still a lot of fun to see. We decided to go ahead and head back to the car after the birds since it was a long walk back and we were all hot and tired. It probably sounds like we didn't do much, but between everything there was a ton of walking. We spent a few hours there! On the way back to the car we decided we need frozen yogurt, so we headed there after! Yum. Perfection. 

Seriously worth it though! Look at this place.

Off exploring with Taylor.

Japanese maple tree.

This was when he wandered far away from us, but he's still pretty close!

Elliott developed a bit of a hitting problem while we were in VA. We're working on it. But here she is telling me "No" and swinging to hit my camera. What a stinker.

Elliott's tiny little wingspan next to a bald eagle's.

Yeah, it was hot. Elliott didn't even walk but half of it and she was soooo sweaty, so you can only imagine how gross we looked and felt! 

Resting after walking up a huge hill back towards the car. 

I'm so glad we did it. Even though it was hot and I probably haven't been that sweaty in my entire life, we had a great time!