First Trip To The Detroit Zoo

About a month ago, my friend Ann who also has a blog had written about her visit to the Detroit Zoo with her family. This was about the same time we were talking about going to Chicago and going to Brookfield Zoo. Then I won the Legoland tickets and our Chicago plans changed. We decided to go to Legoland, the Aquarium, and Navy Pier when visiting Chicago instead of the zoo. So in the back of my mind, I often thought about Ann's blog post about the Detroit Zoo. Since we didn't do the zoo in Chicago, I thought maybe we could head to the Detroit Zoo before summer ended if we got a free day on the weekend. You see, we've never been to the Detroit Zoo, but when I read Ann's blog and saw pictures of a Dinosaur exhibit there, I just knew it would be something Evan would love to see. Yes, there's always next summer to go to the zoo, but the Dinosauria exhibit was only at the zoo until today, September 6th, and then it was going to be extinct. That was even more incentive to get there. From the time we got back from Chicago until school starting we had two weekends to get to the zoo. However Greg had to work all last weekend so that left us with Labor Day weekend. We had also talked about taking the kids to a Tigers game, and when Greg looked into it we found out Sunday is kids day at Comerica Park. So with one weekend left of the summer we had pretty much decided to do the Tigers game until we found out that the game yesterday didn't start until 8pm. On kids day, the kids get to run the bases after the game. So if we were to go to the game we'd definitely have to stay until the end so the kids could run the bases. With that said, and knowing how long baseball can go we vetoed the Tigers game because it was just going to be too late of a night with the kids and driving back from Detroit. So the zoo it was for us yesterday.

The weather was a little iffy in the morning so we kind of waited around a little to see if it was going to rain or not. The zoo was open late for the holiday weekend until 8pm so we figured we had plenty of time. Greg's mom went with us so we went to breakfast before we hit the road and finally left around 11am. It was still overcast, but the radar looked good and didn't look like any rain until later at night. The zoo was pretty busy when we got there, but the crowd was spread out for the most part so it wasn't too bad. When we got our tickets the lady informed us that there were a couple things closed due to the storms the night before. We couldn't feed the giraffes, the Otters weren't out, and the Simulator was closed. As we started to walk through the zoo we couldn't believe how many trees were down. There was a lot of storm damage and there was clean up crew everywhere trying to rapidly clean up the mess. We also found out that there was a power outage and they had to bring in a bunch of generators. Of all days we pick to go to the zoo! I wasn't aware until be walked on this trail that on the other side of the fence is a neighborhood. We heard all this noise and went to check it out and there were trees uprooted everywhere.

Despite all the damages, and a couple closed exhibits, we had a fun time. The kids loved the Dinosauria exhibit! It was neat to see all the life-like dinosaurs. There were 30+ animatronic dinosaurs that roared and moved, as well as a few that spit water. The DinoTrail recreates prehistoric life and the life-like dinosaurs really were amazing! Here's a couple of the dinosaurs (I'll post all our pics on Facebook).


We made our way through the whole zoo and the weather was pretty overcast most of the day, but it was a little muggy and we had a few sprinkles, but nothing major. We saw everything from lions and tigers to zebras and giraffes to kangaroos and rhinos. We also saw the polar bear which took some time because he was hiding the whole time we walked around the Arctic exhibit until we got to the end and we spotted him. There was also prairie dogs, elk, bears, bison, the butterfly garden, vultures, camels, a gorilla, and chimps to name a few. There was a momma chimp with a baby that was only five weeks old. She was cuddling that little chimp so tight and wouldn't budge for anything to show it off so visitors could get a picture. Here's a few of our pics from the day at the zoo!

This gorilla was cool!

We loved the giraffes. This is the baby giraffe. She turned two in June.

Ready to go see the polar bear.

Sunday was this chimps birthday. He turned three!

We left the zoo about 5pm and wanted to grab some dinner on the way home. We ended up going to On The Border in Northville which is right by Trader Joe's. So we made an impromptu stop at TJ's after dinner before we headed home to stock up on a few things. Thanks to Greg's mom for the zoo and dinner! We all had a great time and I'm glad we got to the zoo before summer vacation was over. Now it's Monday night on Labor Day which means tomorrow is the first day of school! My little guy is going to be in school all day for the first time! This mom is a little sad about that.... *sniff sniff*