Walnut Creek Wetland Center

The Walnut Creek Wetland Center has reopened after the pandemic shutdown and we’re so excited to share this educational resource with you! This City of Raleigh park is home to a nature educational center with interactive displays, explorer backpacks, scavenger hunts, books, and live animals you can interact with all for FREE! You can also check out binoculars, boots, and insect nets to explore the diverse wetland ecosystem and greenway trails behind the building.

Before entering the nature center you will find some outdoor exhibits on the deck and at the entrance. Our favorite was a lift-the-flap game where you guess the correct animal by it’s sound. Anything with buttons always keeps my kids entertained, so I’m sure yours will love it too! We also enjoyed the Little Free Nature Library and grabbed a few books to take home. The rockers on the back deck are a nice touch, and it’s a great place to sit and read some of your books or just take in the sounds of nature.

Norman and Betty Camp Educational Center

The highlight of the Walnut Creek Wetland Center is the nature center located inside the park office, named after Norman and Betty Camp. The goal of the center is to increase people’s awareness of the importance of wetlands and the natural environment.

Monthly Theme

The nature center has a monthly theme that includes artifacts, books, scientific information, games, and crafts to educate on the theme of the month. In March the theme is amphibians so we were able to read different facts about them posted on the wall, read themed books in the sitting area, and take home a frog craft bag.

Interact with the animals

The highlight of our visit was interacting with the many animals they have in the nature center. Mr. T the turtle was a favorite and we learned that you can tell a turtle’s gender by the color of their eyes! Staff let us know that Mr. T loves to eat earthworms, so my children made it their goal to collect as many as we could during our wetland walk. We brought them all back to the nature center and fed Mr. T a nice snack!

The nature center also has two different snakes that staff will get out of their cages and let you pet. Interestingly enough, they can only handle one snake a day. The two snakes have a predator/prey relationship and can smell the other snake if you handle one before the other, which wouldn’t turn out well for the staff holding them!

The staff also had a blind frog that they did not get out of his cage, and a bug habitat filled with millipedes and rolly polies. It made me squirm, but the kids were brave and held these bugs without fear. It also got them excited to search for these bugs in their natural habitat on our wetland walk.

Check Out an Explorer Backpack

Inside the nature center you can also check out various different explorer backpacks with activities and materials to guide your nature exploration. We went with the bug backpack based on the recommendation of staff. Our pack included a story book that we read on the back deck and a fun activity where you can create your own insect out of felt. This activity taught us the body parts of an insect and allowed us to customize our own head, thorax, and abdomen with cut out felt pieces. It was a great way to educationally expand on the bugs we just handled in the nature center and the bugs we were going to search for out in the wetlands. Our kit also included tongs and a collection cup so we didn’t have to handle the bugs ourselves if we didn’t want to. This mama appreciated the tongs the most so I didn’t have to touch any bugs or worms!

Explore the Wetlands

After our inside activities we were ready to head out back with our bug backpack and explore the wetlands! There’s a nice mulch trail leading right from the back porch. It’s not stroller friendly, but it’s not a long trail and won’t take you long to complete. However, you will more than likely stop along the way to search for bugs under the trap doors and/or play in the nature play pockets.

I like that the inside activities in the nature center guided our outdoor exploration. I wouldn’t have spent as much time searching for bugs had we not just interacted with some inside. And our job of collecting earthworms for Mr. T’s afternoon snack gave us a tangible goal to achieve, instead of just wandering around aimlessly.

lift the trap door to find lots of bugs and worms underneath

Pandemic Policies

Activities inside of the wetland center are limited due to the pandemic and they have removed a lot of the interactive activities that they had previously. We were allowed to pet the animals and read books, but there wasn’t a lot of high touch areas besides that. They usually have instructor led programs, but those are currently on hold.

Before entering the center you must answer the health screening questions and have your temperature taken. They required everyone, including my children under 5, to wear face masks while inside the nature center. Once outside of the building you do not need to wear masks while exploring the wetlands. We had the place entirely to ourselves other than staff, who were extremely kind and helpful.

Walk the Trails

Nearby to the wetland center you will find two greenway trails to explore. We didn’t go far on our walk, but we enjoyed taking a casual stroll along the paved trails. There weren’t many people out on the trails the day we went, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves. I enjoyed not having to keep my kids out of the way of bikers, so I’d say it’s a great place to take a walk!

Little Rock Trail

The Little Rock Trail is located across the street from the wetland center and takes you behind the homes in a nearby neighborhood.

Walnut Creek Trail

The Walnut Creek Trail is located behind the wetland center. You can get to the trail head by going down the street just a little ways until you come to the giant fish art. The trail winds back through the wetland ecosystem, so you’re more likely to see wildlife along your walk. There were lots of birdhouses but we didn’t actually see any birds!

Do you think you will be making a visit to the Walnut Creek Wetland Center? We definitely recommend you add this awesome educational resource to your week! Check our tot spots map for more nearby fun in Downtown Raleigh!