Vegas: Wetlands Park

As part of our personal quest to see all the pretty places scattered around our fair city, we suited up and found ourselves driving over to the Wetlands Park in Henderson one fine day. By this point we'd gotten Vanticore, our big Van, and were eager to stretch her legs. Eventually we want to get her fully converted to be livable so we can travel about in comfort, not unlike my much loved tortoises who carry their homes with them, but for now she's getting us out and about as we break her in. She's gone to Valley of Fire since this, but since she was still pretty new to us and we were finding new mechanical errors here and there, we kept it close to home and the Wetlands Park is pretty conveniently located just off of Boulder Highway on none other than Wetlands Park Drive ( 7050 E. Wetlands Park Lane

Las Vegas, NV 89122)... it's free to visit and there's quite an extensive network of trails running throughout the park to explore, so we barely just scratched the surface of all there was to see and do during this trip. The museum was preparing to close shortly after we got there, too, so we weren't able to spend as much time checking out the various exhibits (giant flying mechanical insects, animals pelts and more) as we would have liked. The ladies working inside the museum were very cordial and friendly despite being ready to leave, and when it was time for them to start closing up for the day they were still polite. Perhaps it was Antho's enthusiasm, which can be pretty contagious to be around, and he was pretty excited to be there. We'd talked about going several years back when I lived nearby, but it never panned out at the time. Perfect excuse to take Vanticore for a drive and stretch her legs!  It's free to visit 

More photos after the cut!

With these somewhat spooky things, you can get a small taste of what the vision of each animal is like. Neat!

A beaver pelt! No wonder they were such popular trade items in the early settler days, they're so soft!

And look at the chompers on those bad boys! Definitely don't want to get bit by a beaver any time, ever.

The giant snake had a snack in his belly... 😓

"Slide the shell over an animal to hear the sound it makes. Slide over multiple images to create your own symphony of sound."

Antho was pretty stoked! We're fans of interactive exhibits.

This exhibit let you view yourself from different perspectives by adjusting a slider on the display. The camera on the adjacent wall would move accordingly...but I think I just got distracted by having a different angle to look at us from, haha. 😂

Petting all different sorts of animal skins!

These contraptions held the scent of different animals and after pushing them down to shoot a puff of air (and odor) up, you had to try to guess what you were sniffing. I was only able to guess coyote because it's peculiarly strong musk...my sense of smell is terrible. 

The view from inside the museum isn't half bad, either.

Until next time, friends!

XOXO,

NAU