Went to the zoo....

I owed my sister a trip to the zoo before she heads off to college in a couple of weeks. She had not been to the zoo since she was in the first grade! Also,  my in-laws wanted to take Bill, I and the kids to the zoo for my birthday last week (We were supposed to go last Sunday, but it ended up being rainy and stormy all day). So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and invited my sister to come with us for our trip to the zoo on Sunday.

There was some minor disturbances as we headed to the zoo. Bill has printed off directions, as the zoo is a little over an hour away. However, at one point we had to find a different route, as one of the roads had a bridge out. We were able to use the GPS on my sister's smart phone (as Bill and I both have "dumb" phones), which of course took us a route that Bill didn't want to go, but we got there anyways...We were 15 minutes later than what we had told my in-laws that we would meet them, but we got there.

The weather was warm and sunny...and so the zoo was packed and we had to park 0.4 miles away from the entrance (Bill mapped it out last night).....

Once in the zoo, most of the animals were sleeping, but there were a few that were wide awake. We went to the zoo's new Africa exhibit that just opened a few months ago, and it was crowded! I love the fact that the lions are now closer to you (before they were just in a chain link cage) and that the zoo finally has giraffes back, but overall I was underwhelmed at the exhibits.

We visited the African safari exhibits, part of North America exhibit, the seashore exhibit, and the African congo exhibits and of course the kids had to stop and climb on every scultpture that they had!

Rebecca, Jacob and Benjamin loved looking at the animals. Rebecca's favorite animal was the okapi. Jacob said he liked the monkeys. And Benjamin liked pointing to the different animals; this is the first trip where he has shown interest in some of the animals. My sister said her favorite part of the zoo was the humans! She said she liked people watching. My favorite I think was the giraffes, just because I think they are beautiful animals, and they were so close!

As we were just leaving the zoo and heading home, my dad called and invited us to meet them at Rooster's restaurant for dinner. So we got out my sister's GPS again and headed that way. We had a fun time at dinner with them and had some tasty wings! Then we headed home after a long, hot, busy day!

When was the last time you were at a zoo? 

What is your favorite zoo animal?