For the last two point five weeks, the girls and I have been planning a trip to the zoo. Weather predictions were fine then … though it turned out to be the hottest day of the year so far. Go figure! But, we trudged on simply because they are still tracked out and I took the day off. There is no other day to go right now.
We decided to make it a super early start and actually left the house at 7:36 a.m. … only 6 minutes late!
And we still arrived 10 minutes early. 🙂
Getting to a zoo at 9am — right at opening — is an interesting experience. First of all — it’s deserted. Second of all the animals are asleep!
My goal was to get in and out by noon … to avoid the dangerous heat. We actually lasted until 2:15pm as we saw the last of the animals — the gators — and then left.
In the shade it was quite bearable. So we made it a game to walk only in shade. If we hit sun, we had to run through it to the next shady spot.
The girls bought (ok, I bought) water bottles at our first water stop. Because they didn’t have Emily and Abby bottles, they opted to buy Sierra and Kelsey instead. 🙂 Water, Gatorade (how appropriate) and water again later and they were set for our five and a quarter hour walk.
More photos in the album, but for a quick overview, here are quite a few!
A typical stop on a day that reached 101 degrees.
The first monkey’s of the day. Note … all these pictures SUCK because I used the (@*#&%&*# point and shoot instead of the good camera. I just wanted the opportunity to capture some video. Argh!!!!!!!!!
The chimps (and Gorillas) were the mostly asleep animals at our entrance.
See? Sleepyheads.
My girls … Sierra and Kelsey. 😉
Going elephant “searching”
This guy was MY favorite. He was all cozied up in his bath. Dipping his head in, splashing slowly without a care in the world.
Emi calls this big guy “Canteloupe”. She was confusing him with the “Antelope” that we saw and the “Canteloupe” that we ate and the bison we stared at. 🙂
Unfortunately, the polar bears were not to be found. 🙁 Wah! But the girls pretended to be cold in the iceberg. 🙂
The sea lions and the seals made up for the missing polar bears.
