Swamps get a bad rap for being hot, humid, and stinky and a terrible place to be in summer. But don't believe it! Swamp Stomp at First Landing State Park this summer has been a blast. For those who aren't familiar with the concept: the program involves a short hike through the woods, under trees laden with Spanish moss. The park ranger hauls up big netfuls of muck from the bottom of the swamp and spreads it on the boardwalks. Then you root through it to search for the water bugs, amphibians, and invertebrates that live there.

This event is super hands on, and kids are encouraged to touch and explore, to gently hold and examine the things they find and compare them to pictures and information provided by the ranger, who does her best to make sure that everybody finds something! Anouk found a tadpole (with legs, halfway through metamorphosis!) and a couple of water scorpions and man, you would have thought she'd found gold nuggets. I love to see her getting less squeamish with bugs and squiggly things and to learn about the landscape that she lives in.




Besides learning about swamp life, we also heard, as we hiked, some fun facts about the dune ecosystem of the park, the variety of trees and vegetation (did you know this is the farthest north Spanish moss can grow?), and water quality (did you also know that the tannins in leaves make the swamp water super pure to drink? -- but I'm not going to try it any time soon).

Swamp Stomp is held at the park every Tuesday and Friday throughout the summer and is only one of the fantastic programs that First Landing puts on. Check out the full roster of offerings here.

PS: BUG SPRAY. We've found picaridin to be the best against mosquitoes, ticks, and those awful biting flies.

Fall is one of my favorite times to get outdoors, so it's been a bummer that so many of the HRVA area national parks and sites are closed due to the government shutdown. Luckily, First Landing is a state park and is still open! And it's at its absolute prettiest right now.

Our playgroup met up there last week for the express purpose of visiting the new Discovery Room at the Trail Center. Unfortunately, the room was off-limits while staff cleaned and fed the animals, but luckily again, the trail center features some other great stuff to hold the little ones' attention, including a cool little exhibit on local flora and fauna, complete with a "please touch" area where we could stroke fur pelts and listen to seashells.



After we'd done a few turns around the exhibit, we went back outside to set off down the Bald Cypress trail, a mile-and-a-half-long boardwalk trail through a marshy wooded area. We didn't make it through the whole loop -- the kids stopped several times, to peer at a frog, climb a hill, and eat some trail mix. And pose for lots of pictures.

First Landing is beautiful in every season, but it really shines in late summer/fall, so much so that I'm adding it to our Fall Fun List as a must-see autumnal destination. What are your favorite spots/trails in the park? Have you made it to the Discovery Room? I'm determined to check it out, so I know we'll be back soon.

I realized a short while ago that although I lived in the area for the first 17 years of my life, I'd never before gone to the beach at First Landing State Park (though I have spent quite a bit of time on the park's hiking and biking trails). A few weekends ago, we met up with a group of friends -- and their kids of varying ages -- to rectify this oversight. We spent the day getting mildly sunburned and extremely sandy and overall wondering -- what took us so long?

The beach at First Landing is located between the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and Cape Henry, which marks the start of the Atlantic beaches of Virginia Beach. However, the First Landing beach is a quintessential bay beach -- sheltered, protected, with very little surf and almost no waves. This makes it a great place to launch kayaks and also pretty much perfect for little kids (and also for floating in the shallows in a giant inflatable raft, which I mean to do a lot of the next time we go).

Still, the waves that were there were enough to deter Anouk from going near the water -- we're working on undoing some of the trauma that was inflicted from a rogue swell in the face during our Hatteras trip. Her friend A., though, was more than happy to spend as much time as possible wading and watching schools of tiny fish near the shore. Luckily there was more than enough sand to keep our A. occupied, and she enjoyed watching the ships waiting to go through the shipping lanes so much that she did consent (verrrrry warily) to going out for a brief jaunt in Dada's boat.






Best of all from a parent's perspective, First Landing has SHOWERS and RESTROOMS, which bumped it up into the #1 Kid-Friendly Beach Spot in the area in my opinion, surpassing East Beach (which has neither). There's also a wheelchair ramp that goes right down onto the sand, great for strollers, beach carts, or wheelchair-bound beachgoers. A few things to keep in mind if you go -- parking costs $5 on Saturday and Sunday ($4 on the weekdays), and I'm pretty-but-not-totally sure they want that in cash. Also, the lot fills up quickly on the weekends -- we arrived at 11 and got the last parking spot. So get there early or else you'll have to hike over to the beach from across the street.

Seriously -- what did take us so long?