There was a Center had a pig and Bingo was his name-oh...

After your North County excursion has taken you to Legoland, the Flower Fields, Oceanside Harbor, and the San Diego Botanic Garden, you may start wondering what else there is for you to do. Here’s something: check out the Discovery Center on Cannon Road, and once you’re there, maybe wonder why you’ve never been there before. Yes, it’s that kind of place.

“When I started here 14 years ago, my goal was to make this a place where people would stay for at least 45 minutes,” says Lisa Rodman, the center’s CEO. “Now, nobody stays for just 45 minutes — we’ve had people stay for half a day or even longer.” With good reason. What opened in 2006 as the teaching hub for the Agua Hedionda Lagoon Foundation (the nonprofit charged with ensuring the lagoon’s health) is now popular destination that last year attracted more than 55,000 visitors, most of them young families with kids.

Located on Cannon Road, about a mile east of the I-5 freeway, on the southern shores of the lagoon, the Discovery Center features an exhibit room holding Native American and Spanish Rancho artifacts, a fish tank where kids can interact with fish, sea stars, sea cucumbers, and other sea creatures; a picnic area with panoramic views of the lagoon and Pacific Ocean; 3.6 miles of hiking trails through coastal sage and chaparral; and critters, many of them rescues, including raptors, lizards, snakes, geckos, tortoises, and a bearded dragon. Oh, and a white pot-bellied pig named Bingo. “She is definitely a star at the lagoon,” Rodman says, “and she cohabits with a flock of chickens and her friend, Tortie, a desert tortoise.” Bingo is friendly, especially when visitors purchase Bingo Bags filled with her favorite food. The center is also home to Fairyland, underneath a towering native oak, where kids can adopt fairies and even write letters to them. The fairies promptly write back, Rodman promises — in English or in Spanish.

And while piggies and fairies are fun, education remains a top priority. The center continues to pride itself on its Academy for Environmental Stewardship, a field-trip program for third graders that incorporates hands-on learning about everything from lagoon history to migratory birds, watersheds, and Native American culture. More than 70,000 kids have attended. There’s a summer camp for kids between the ages of five and ten, a preschool for toddlers between the ages of three and five, and a Brick Walkway campaign that awards scholarships to kids from underserved areas for a week-long STEAM education program that culminates with the kids participating in a Habitat for Humanities house build. “Last year we had 55 kids participate,” Rodman says, “and this year, we’re shooting for 75.”

Admission is a suggested donation of $15, and that gives guests the run of the place, for as long as they want.