Fun on Belle Isle

Over spring break my neighbor asked me and the boys if we wanted to go with her and her daughter to the Belle Isle Aquarium one morning.  I looked at their website for more information and we decided to go on Friday since they're only open Friday-Sunday.  This has been something we've been wanting to check out for quite some time, but I'm not very familiar with the area and I always get a little uncomfortable going somewhere I'm not familiar with.  Scott opted to stay home and do some work on his garage (he's putting in some new electrical outlets and light fixtures), so we took off around 10am and made good time getting us there at about 10:45.

It was so cold that morning and very windy, especially being near the Detroit River!  The Aquarium was quite busy with it being spring break and it being completely free.  I read they would check for the Recreation Passport tab on my van when we got onto Belle Isle, but there was nobody there to check. 

We quickly learned upon entering that...
1.  It's the oldest Aquarium in the United States.  Cool, right?!
2.  It's actually quite small. 
3.  The tanks were all really well maintained and almost all of them had fish to look at.

The kids liked watching the Piranhas eat during one of their feedings at 11am.  I really enjoyed looking at the tiling throughout the building.  It felt like being down in the subway in New York City!  It had a very cool vibe!

We were done with the Aquarium in probably 30 minutes and we decided to check out the conservatory next door.  Another completely free activity on Belle Isle!

The conservatory was probably my favorite stop of our morning!  It was very well maintained, nice and warm, and the kids loved looking at all the different flowers, plants, and even cactus.  One part of the conservatory had some nice benches where you could just sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery.  They were occupied when we were in there, otherwise I would have encouraged the boys to sit with me for a minute.  Oh who am I kidding.  Them, sit still?

Considering the roads on Belle Isle make it so that you essentially do a giant loop around the "Isle", we figured we would just go to all the stops that were open today.  So, next up was the Great Lakes Dossin Museum!  Which, by the way, was way better than what I was anticipating.  Sean is huge into learning about the Titanic right now so it fascinated him to see the different type of ships that used to go down the Detroit River.  There were hands on things for the kids to play with like a ship's whistle, blocks to add onto a wooden ship to mimic the weight of cargo, a canoe to sit in and paddle, and a big ship's wheel to spin around.

The best part was walking upstairs and getting to go into part of a ship that they attached to the museum.  There was a man explaining what that particular ship did back in the day and the kids loved getting to push all the buttons and pretend they were the captains. 

Our final stop was the Nature Center that's affiliated with the Detroit Zoo.  It was pretty small and didn't have much in the way of animals.  They had a few tanks with different snakes, frogs, and other amphibians.  But, we lucked out once again, and we were there for a feeding of deer.  The boys each got to feed some white deer that were really pretty. 

We ate our lunch in the Nature Center and let the kids run around and play on a beautiful play structure right outside the Nature Center.  It had two different kind of "ziplines", a pirate ship, and a pretend rock cave that they could hide in.  It looked like it was brand new! 

We had a great day exploring Belle Isle and we're hoping to come back in the summer to check out more of the play areas outside and even the beach.  Now that it's a State Park I'm hopeful that it will stay clean and well-kept so we can come back.