River Bend Nature Center

On our way to Oklahoma City from Abilene we stopped halfway in Wichita Falls and went to the River Bend Nature Center.

The first thing you walk into is the gift shop. I paid the admission and the lady at the counter told us that if we wanted to go walk out on the trails that we probably needed to do that first because otherwise it will be too hot. According to the website the nature trails are set out on 17 acres. I know that she told me this but I couldn’t remember so I checked the website. Since it was already hot we decided that we would just check out the children’s garden really quickly and skip everything else outside.

There wasn’t much in the children’s garden and some of the plants were kind of dry but they had a little general store and a well.

After Connor looked at the well we went quickly back to the inside. We started first in the Ruby N. Priddy Butterfly and Nature Conservatory. There were a few real animals in here and then a few fake animals. There were turtles, prairie dogs, a greater roadrunner, fish, and of course the butterflies.

There was a separate little room for the butterflies in the building and I was actually able to take some good pictures of them in there.

There were also a couple of activities set up. One of them was a crayon rubbing using different insect stencils. They’re not actually stencils but I don’t know what else to call them. The insect design is raised that way you can put the paper over them and rub the crayon to get the design on your paper.

They had one of those picture stand things at the exit. Connor wanted to be both ladybugs so they took two pictures.

When you exit you walk out onto the terrace. It looked pretty nice when we there. I’m looking at the pictures on the website and it doesn’t look as nice as it did in person but I believe there were also tables set out when we there and it made it look like a nice spot to sit down and relax or for an event if it were cooler. There was also a painted horse out there and the boys took a picture with it.

We went back into the learning center and took a look around there. They had a few live animal, not live animals, and some rocks and stuff. One of the animals…I want to say it was a little rat or a mouse maybe…was named Cinderella. I don’t remember any of the other animals’ names.

After we finished looking around the boys sat down to color.

After they were done coloring we went to the gift shop and then headed out. I can’t say anything about the outside trails but overall it was smaller then I had imagined it would be after looking at the website but the boys enjoyed it I think. It was also nice because although the total drive from Abilene to Oklahoma City was only four hours it was still nice to stop and break up the drive even more.

Thanks for reading and hopefully I will get some of Oklahoma City done next before the party on Sunday. The first things I plan to write about will be The Museum of Osteology, The Capital, and The History Center.