Off to the Zoo

For Christmas last year, we promised our kids trips instead of buying them toys that would get played with for a week and then forgotten. It’s something we’d always talked about doing but never actually done; in our “poorer” years, it was easier to have a Dollar Store holiday than to make promises we couldn’t keep. We gifted them three trips: roller skating (which we did in January), a trip to the lava caves of Mount St. Helens (still to come – we’ve been told that’s a summertime activity), and a trip to the zoo. We did the zoo last Monday with my in-laws.

There were the “normal” animals…

Bears…

Monkeys…

Cougars…

And my personal favorite, elephants.

The baby, “Lily,” was born just last year. This was our first time seeing her. Even though she’s an elephant, she definitely had “baby” qualities. So adorable!

The African exhibit (which is my favorite, outside of the elephants – our zoo has Asian elephants) had giraffes:

There was a body of water (lake? pond? puddle? I’m not sure…) in the giraffe enclosure that, as Seahawk pointed out looked a lot like a giraffe head and neck, so I snapped a picture of that too.

There were also the obligatory sleeping hippos:

And flamingos. Yes, flamingos! I’d never seen them before; they were absolutely gorgeous birds. They even stood on one of their spindly legs like their stereotype. I suppose they’re stereotyped that way for a reason.

When they opened their wings, I was surprised to see that the tips were black. The black wingtips on the pink birds was absolutely gorgeous.

In the mongoose exhibit, they had a tunnel that kids could crawl through and be part of the exhibit.

There was a model of a bald eagle’s nest you could climb in. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t life size, though.

The zoo also boasts several statues for kids to climb on throughout.

I remember playing on some of them when I was a kid!

A lunch in the zoo cafe let me know why my mom always packed a picnic when I was a kid. Whew, that was overpriced! Lol!

That’s a pretty good overview of our trip :).

What’s your favorite zoo animal?

–Wendy