York River State Park

One Saturday morning in August we didn't have anything planned and we decided to check out a local park that we hadn't been to before. We decided on York River State Park and happened to go on Estuaries Day. They had tons of stuff for kids, such as coloring, painting, animals (including a few roaming turtles), archery, "fishing," kayaking, paddle boarding, canoeing, treasure hunting, hiking, and honestly the list goes on and on. Most of the activities were geared toward older kids because they had educational components (about estuaries!) that Eleanor was not able to grasp yet. She still painted a fish and looked at the animals, but wasn't able to understand the environmental concepts they were trying to convey.

She also "fished" with Chris using a real pole but fake fish, which were labeled with pictures for older kids to learn the types of fish that live in estuaries. Eleanor loved the "crappies."

She learned about boating safety from the coast guard's mascot "Coasty." (Creative name, I know.)

Then we were led around by a pirate (AmeriCorps volunteer) using fun GPS things (kind of like geocaching) to discover pirate treasure throughout the park and learn the history of the pirates that used to live in this area.

YRP GPS from Katie Stratton on Vimeo.

We ate some lunch near the York River.

Then we decided to head down a trail where we found a park employee who was going to give a seining demonstration. Since seining wasn't really our speed (involves cooperation), we just grabbed a net and searched for estuary animals. We didn't catch anything before Eleanor accidentally stepped on my foot underneath the mud, thought it was some kind of animal, and wanted to get out of the water. We watched from the shore while other kids caught some crabs and let Eleanor look at their catches. Jane, on the other hand, was all about it and kept trying to grab the pole connected to our net which made things a bit difficult.

We then just decided to hike the rest of Beaver Trail back around Woodstock Pond to where we had initially parked when we came in. Eleanor alternated between hiking and riding when she got tired.

We had a blast. We will definitely plan on heading back to this park at some point!