California... part 3 ~ The San Diego Zoo

On Tuesday, we all headed down to the San Diego Zoo for some fun with the animals. Thankfully, Micah slept most of the way down, so by the time we arrived, he was awake and ready for the day. We had a quick picnic lunch in the parking lot... free parking, by the way! woo hoo! :) ... and then headed into the zoo to see some animals. This is an amazing zoo. Unlike any I have ever been to... which, my zoo experience is quite limited... I think I've been to the Lincoln Park Zoo, Brookfield, the Racine County Zoo, the Milwaukee Zoo, the DeYoung Family Zoo (another amazing zoo, but for other reasons), and maybe the zoo in Grand Rapids... but I really enjoyed the way the San Diego zoo was set up. You don't really feel like you're wandering around a zoo... each type of animal has its own "trail" that you follow to see the different species. And there are a LOT of hills! We were all ready to sit down in the car after walking around the zoo for several hours. :) We had a great time and got some great pictures of the boys and the different animals we saw. So, without further delay... here's the San Diego Zoo in pictures. :)

The flamingos ~

Looking at some species of monkey ~

A closer-up of that species of monkey ~

The boys were quite enthralled with the monkeys ...

I love the look on Lisa's face in this picture... I'm pretty sure we were watching a monkey poop in his hand and eat it. Disgusting!

An Okapi ~ he kind of looked like a mix of a giraffe and a zebra

Up close and personal with the hippos ~ they are massive animals! I certainly wouldn't want to encounter one of these in the wild!
I love how you can see Aaron and Micah's faces in the glass. Micah was pretty interested in the hippos. :)

Wow!

Just outside of the hippo exhibit, they had a little play area with a cast-iron hippo that the boys could have played on for hours. But, we got our pictures and kept moving (to the dismay and protest of Luke and Micah)

This one is for Grandma K ~ Micah and the otter :)

:)

An arctic fox having some lunch

Mountain lion thinking the people watching him looked like lunch ;) We were just glad there was a fence separating us from this guy!

Panda munching on some bamboo ~

It started to cool off quite a bit towards the end of the day, so we bundled Micah up with some blankets. We all thought he looked a bit like Mother Teresa... any thoughts? :)

Our boys (and a random grandpa-looking guy in the background)

Aaron, Micah and the rhinoceros ~

We had a much better experience with the giraffes at this zoo than at the one in Racine. :) Ask any member of the Klingenmaier family for that story!

My sweet boys ~

And to finish off the day, we all posed for a picture by the sign at the entrance. What a wonderful, fun zoo experience!