We were trying to keep the kids on our MDT schedule while visiting the PDT time zone. This made for a few nights of putting the kids to bed at 6:30 California time (to match their normal school schedule bed time of 7:30). It also made for a few days of the kids waking up at 5:15 California time (I think they were excited). My dad says that 4:00 comes early in the morning, and I can attest that 5:15 feels awfully early too. As the week went on, they tended to go to bed later and get up later, but it seemed to help them when we returned to go to bed at close to the normal time.
Monday, we made our way to the "World Famous San Diego Zoo", as the GPS called it. We arrived to find that it was field trip day for about a thousand elementary school kids. We were afraid that it was going to be very crowded, and the whole point of going when we did was to avoid crowds. Our first stops (after the gift shop to buy my son a San Diego Zoo hat for his birthday, which you'll see in some pictures, and which he promptly managed to lose on Wednesday) were the flamingos and the reptile house, right inside the entrance. They were very crowded, so we made our way off to the side to an area designed for young children that the school kids seemed to be ignoring. From that point on, we seemed to do pretty well at being near a fair amount of people without feeling crowded.
Here are some pictures of some of the things we did. We didn't get pictures of everything we did at the zoo, but we got some of the human animals and some of the non-human animals. The kids seemed to feel that the highlights of the day were the "Skyfari" sky tram ride and the bus tour that allowed us to see far more of the zoo than we would have had energy to walk through. For my wife and I, the highlights were the fact that we were only 2 miles from the resort so we could go back for lunch and a short nap, and the fact that the churro vendor that we were going to buy some snacks from near closing time had already closed his shop and so gave us 6 churros and a pretzel for free, plus the fact that the 3 for one passes allowed us free rides on the sky ride and the bus tour.
This bench was at the entrance to the kids area of the zoo.
There was a petting zoo in the kids area. My son really knows how to pet animals carefully, don't you think?
There were lots of interactive things to play on and around throughout the zoo. These were in the kids area.
As fans of the Disney Channel show "Kim Possible", we had to get a picture of the naked mole rats. Rufus!
There were some bear statues near the polar bear exhibit that the kids thought would be fun to sit on. An interesting thing about the polar bear exhibit is that we didn't get to see the polar bear because it had been taken off exhibit. We heard that it was because one of the small deer-like animals from across the way had gotten into the polar bear exhibit. The story goes that they weren't afraid of the deer getting caught by the polar bear, but rather that the deer would fall into the very deep and steep pool at the front of the exhibit and drown. Supposedly, the polar bear was taken off exhibit to allow the zookeepers to rescue the deer. Sadly for us, we didn't get to see polar bear, deer, or zookeeper in the exhibit, and we ran out of patience waiting for any of them to appear. That happens pretty fast with small children.
I found that gibbons like this move the way that I usually think of monkeys moving - swinging from branch to branch, using vines, and so forth. They don't have tails, though, so that part is out. This one seemed to find us as fascinating as we found her.
My boy really knows how to enjoy a churro to the fullest.
This wallaby and koala were in the same exhibit. The koala was asleep and therefore not shy, but the wallaby didn't want to look at us. Or it just happened to be facing the other way when the picture was taken. They look a lot like small kangaroos when you can see more than their backside. I kind of think the backside looks like a huge rat in this picture.
Pandas are sensitive to noise, so we had to be quiet near them. When the bus tour went by, the guide told us we had to be quiet and he didn't say anything until we had passed the exhibit. We went back to see them since the exhibit was fenced from the road. They looked to be pretty pleased with their arrangement - all the food they could eat, relative quiet compared to the rest of the zoo, and comfortable surroundings. People even hope for them to reproduce the way an older couple "encourages" their adult children to get married and give them grandchildren! Sounds like a great gig if you can get it! *grin*
The gorillas were the penultimate exhibit we visited. They were kind of hard to get pictures of, but these statues held still much better, so we got pictures of them instead.
Last, we returned to the reptile house to see the huge yellow boa constrictor. Unfortunately, the picture got cut off just below the very tip of the mouth, so it looks like we took a picture of another tourist taking a picture of something with a yellow snout. The snake snout is at the bottom left.
More to come later.
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