Saturday outing: Nicols Arboretum

One thing we want to do in the three years we'll be here in Michigan is explore our new home! So we've made a goal that every Saturday (homework permitting) we'll go out and see something new for a few hours.  

Last Saturday, we went all of 1.5 miles from home to Nicols Arboretum.  They have a HUGE peony garden there and it's the perfect time to see them because they're all in bloom (over 10,000 when they're all open, said le handy brochure)!  

Here's the walkway:

And a few lovely blossoms:

Peonies are so weird because that blossom above is the same species as this one below, even though they look nothing alike! 

And obviously, so more gratuitous photos, cause dang those flowers were pretty! 

After looking at the flowers, we decided to hike(ish) on one of the many many trails they have criss-crossing the arboretum.  Even though we were almost in the heart of the city, the path looked like this: 

It totally made us feel like we had driven hours to some secluded trail for some peace and quiet--and it was almost in our backyard! 

The trail led down to a nice view of the Huron.

The path wound along the river for a little while before arriving at this awesome amphitheater (where they'll have Shakespeare performances later this summer--cool, right?).

And then we got to this neat "prarie" style area.  I won't go into all the interesting details of why they keep it that way, etc, but suffice it to say Jesse and Niko read alllllll about it ;)

We kept Niko in the backpack for most of the trails--they were steep-ish and frankly, his little legs keep us from moving quickly (not to mention he'd have wanted to touch every single twig and bug along the way!) so once we got to the prarie area we let him roam free--and boy, was he happy! 

I think this last picture basically sums up how happy we were for our little outing and why we'll be going there again a lot while we live here! Hooray for the great outdoors!