The zoo yesterday was so amazing, it always is, we are so blessed to have such a gem in the heart of our city. It has been around since the 1904 Worlds Fair created the Flight Cage and the city bought it. We've had such amazing zoo directors with foresight and passion. The most famous of which was Marlin Perkins of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom fame.
It seems like every year, they find another way to simply make it more amazing! The enclosures are designed to keep the animals in more of a natural habitat. The most recent of which is the Sea Lion enclosure. Mini-me completely loved that! The tunnel underneath allowed for such an amazing view and kept us busy watching for quite a bit of time.
The Sea Lion show completely amazed her, and with Grampa's help she is the proud recipient of a Frisbee tossed to her by Benjamin (Benny) the 11 year old sea lion. She was in a front row seat and he passed by her within inches. She was so mesmerized that her souvenir was a build-a-bear sea lion, whom she named April (ironically, that was Benny's trainers name).
We road the train. And took a good bit of time to pet the stingrays, although she wasn't so sure about the sharks in the enclosure, me either... I will admit that I ended up pulling my hand back rather abruptly when they swam up to me. I guess that is a fear that has been brought home pretty firmly. Even if the guy walking around in the middle of the pool with them swimming all around insisted it was safe, sorry, just wasn't feeling that one.
Our goal was to wear her out with fun, I think she wore us out. We rode the 4 D simulator, that was great, listening to her laugh beside me was awesome! Found every misting fan and enjoyed the beautiful paintings. We had our ears hurting from the call of one of the birds, we are pretty sure he didn't like Grampa, because he wasn't yelling until Grampa walked up.
We enjoyed the beautiful moon jellyfish, and crawled into the inside viewing area of the frog enclosure. Decided we simply weren't that into goats. And spied the gorilla's hiding in the far back shaded corner.
It was so much fun to enjoy our baby girl. She makes us so happy! Although she professed to wanting to stay forever, she sat in the car for 20 minutes before Mom finally got all her treasures loaded and ready to go. I think she missed Mommy more than she wanted to admit. But that Gramma and Grampa were acceptable substitutes.
The real world is creeping back in this morning. It is going to be three incredibly busy days. Then Hubby and I are going to unwind, relax and just enjoy the life. We are taking a couple of days off to unwind and hopefully do some motorcycle riding. We'll see... life has a way of deciding what is going to happen... and I am okay with that, because I just need a little bit of down time. We are already sneaking up on the end of August... time is flying by this year.
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