The Shearwater Nest: Family Trip To The Zoo

Yesterday and today were the L&L Zoo Days at Potter Park Zoo. The local grocery store L&L, has free tickets to the zoo two days during the summer. All you have to do is go into the store and ask for the tickets and they're yours. I hear of this every year and always forget about it until it's too late. So this year I picked up some tickets a couple weeks ago, marked it on the calendar, and off to the zoo we went today. It was our first family trip to the zoo and Emmaline's first time to the zoo. I had a doctor's appointment this morning so Greg took the morning off, then just decided to take the whole day off so he could go along with us to the zoo. My friend Wesley and her daughter Chloe also went with us. Here's Emmaline and her buddy Chloe.

We left for the zoo after lunch, and when we got there it was a zoo, in more ways than one. The traffic and people were crazy. Greg had ridden by there yesterday on his bike and said it was packed. I figured today with the weather on the iffy side and sprinkling a little, and it being the second day of zoo days it wouldn't be as busy. Well I was wrong, it was busy crazy and lots of people. I think we actually hit it at a good time if there was a good time because when we left it was even crazier!

We were able to maneuver through the zoo though for the most part and were able to see most of the animals. However, there were a few animals that weren't out for one reason or another and because it was so hot some were hiding. It was hard to see them, especially the kids had trouble seeing since they're so short. Here's a good example. This tiger wouldn't move for anything. She was staying in this water cooling off the whole time...

but this tiger was wide awake and very scary...

Since we were at the zoo for a good chunk of the afternoon, that meant we were cutting into Em's nap time and Evan's "school time." I figured though that the zoo could be his "school time" since he was learning about the different animals. However, when we got to the big horn sheep, we weren't quite expecting the school lesson of the day to be sex ed.! We saw three big horn sheep and this one was perched on this rock with nowhere to go.

When she finally did climb down, one of the males was feeling a little frisky and he took of and went after her. Of course all the adults were cracking up, but the kids had no idea what was going on. Thankfully she got away and went back to this spot. She wasn't interested at all!

Although it was hot and crowded, we all had a fun time! It's not the greatest zoo around, but since we had free tickets it was worth it. I'd really like to get to Binder Park Zoo with the kids this summer. Evan's been there once when he was younger and I'm sure they'd both enjoy it lots! We were a little disappointed that the river otters weren't out. (There's a viewing spot where the otters swim right up to the window and you can see them up close.) Maybe next time, we'll get to see them. The line for the coral reef exhibit was really long so we weren't able to see that either. Em was too tired to wait that long so we had to get going. There were also some bounce houses and a huge bounce slide for kids to go on outside of the park so Evan had a fun time on the slide! As we wound our way through the zoo I tried a few times to take a picture of the kids, but they wouldn't cooperate together. So this is the best shot I got of my two crabby kids at picture time at the zoo...