A Trip to the Meijer Gardens

We visited the children's area of the Meijer Gardens this afternoon. Maya got to play in water at the interactive Great Lakes exhibit. It's a cement formation of all the Great Lakes and their surrounding states that is filled with water, each lake dumping into the next one, kind of stair-stepping down. Maya played in the shortest of the lakes and had fun splashing, playing with toy boats, and sitting on the edge, which was just the perfect height for her to park her little butt on. A couple of times, we had to stop her from climbing into the "lake", as that was against the rules. The feature that thrilled her even more than the water was the little "Monet bridge" (pictured above). The first time she crossed it on her hands and knees, then she tried walking over it. After a few times of walking over it, she started walking up one side, then running down the other. She had a great time. I think she would have walked back and forth over that thing for the rest of the day. Maybe we should consider installing one in our backyard. It would keep her busy for hours! We also visited the beaver's cave, rock quarry, and log cabin, where she got to play with very old wooden toys and humongous checker pieces. We didn't end up seeing much of the park, but that wasn't really the goal of the trip. I just wanted to let Maya have the opportunity to explore some new surroundings, and she had a blast! This was actually the first time that I didn't bring the stroller along for this kind of trip. Maya walked about 85% of the time. The other 15%, either Grandpa Baker or I carried her. She did REALLY well! We'll have to go back there sometime very soon. We all had a really good time!