Summer's here!! Wondering where to go to play outdoors with your kids... and not get bored after 30 minutes? Load up the car, bring snacks and head to Tamarack Nature Center's Play Area and Discovery Garden!
You won't find any slides or or swings or monkey bars. Instead you will find an area filled with logs, sticks and stones where you can build your own fort...
...until you are ready to run over to the 'cliffs' where you can scamper on the rocks, climb the walls, charge through a cave...
...before you head over to the garden where you can dig in the dirt, use an old-fashioned hand pump to water the vegetable plants, watch the windmill pump water into an old-fashioned water tank where the water flows down a gravel stream...
...to the waterways area where all ages can create dams and rivers and play for hours. It didn't take our granddaughter long to figure out that tapping the brown disk starts fresh water running for more river building... amusing three generations working, playing and creating together.
This is precisely the goal of Tamarack Nature Center's Destination for Discovery... "helping people celebrate the human spirit and discover the value of nature through art, play, exploration and inquiry". Our children are a generation that has traded tree climbing, rock hopping and worm watching for video games and televsion... Tamarack's mission is to ensure that "no child is left inside"!
All I can say is WOW! Our whole family was impressed and wants to go back. It isn't close to where we live, but is worth the trip! If you would like to live nearby, check out homes for sale near White Bear Lake.
Located diagonally across the metro in the opposite corner from the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, you can visit Tamarack Nature Center at 5287 Otter Lake Road, White Bear Township, MN 55110, east of I-35E and north of Highway 96. Note: they are planning a new entrance and parking lot off County Road H2 in case you don't find it on Otter Lake Road.
Did I mention that Tamarack Nature Center also has about 5 miles of trails on its 320 acres, educational programs and volunteer opportunities? It is part ofRamsey County's Bald Eagle-Otter Lakes Regional Park.
Sharlene Hensrud, RE/MAX Results - Email - Twin Cities Realtor
