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We’ve been wanting to take you to the Zoo for a long time…since you were a baby. Daddy hurt his back and we weren’t able to do a lot of walking for over a year there. He’s feeling better now, and we opted for Disneyland passes over San Diego Zoo passes this year. That and we’re about to re-do the kitchen and build a new room downstairs so we’re trying to pinch a few pennies. All that adds up to a compromise. We took you to *our* zoo here in the desert – the Living Desert. It’s not half bad. Not anything like a big City Zoo, and I sorely missed my elephants and monkey. But still, they had a ton of animals and it was fun to introduce you to them.
They have lots of cats and they turned out to be, of course, some of your favorites. You’re meowing at one of them in the photo below. You acted a little scared of the reptiles all on your own. You whooed at the owl. And you gave the giant stone lizard a big kiss on the lips. You also got to be within about 6 inches of a very scary hyena… he walked *right* up on the glass while you were standing there watching.
You got to ride the carousel and eat ice cream. And the weather was perfect. During the summer this zoo closes at 1pm and there is a real reason for that. But this day was splendid, a beautiful desert winter day.
Oh, and you got to pan for gold with Daddy. Daddy is a BIG fan of panning for gold. It’s something he and his family used to do when he was growing up with Granny and Grandpa and Autie Steph. They used to road trip to Montana a lot and visit ghost towns and what not. He was so excited to get to share that with you. And you rocked it, baby. You really loved scooping up the dirt and trying to swirl it around and, most of all, dumping the water.
The coolest animals they had on hand had to be the giraffes. And we caught them right at feeding time so we got pretty up close and personal. You were beat by the end of the day, ready for cuddles and a nap on the way home.
San Diego is still on the agenda, maybe in the Fall. But this was a nice substitute.