Summer Fun: Zoo Day!

  Now it is finally starting to feel like vacation.  Youngest son and his girlfriend M had planned on a zoo day and invited me to come along with them. I love the zoo so I said sure. We have a family + guest membership (which also allows us free access to hundreds of zoos across America..something we've taken advantage of when traveling) so getting in for all of us was a freebie.
The weather looked like it might not co-operate, sunny at 7 am but cloudy at 9 am. Finally at 10 am when we were picking M up it looked as if the sun was fighting to win this particular battle. Temperatures were in the low 80s. We'd discussed whether or not to take a picnic lunch along but in the end we simply decided to get either the McD's or the Pizza Hut food available in the main food court. I have budgeted some summer money for fun so the $40 I took along came from this money. I wasn't unhappy with the lunch bill since it came to just under $20 but I will say that next time we will bring water bottles along with us to keep hydrated since the price of a bottle of water has doubled since last summer. Yikes.
Just as we entered the Rainforest exhibit (indoors) portion of the zoo it decided to rain. <sigh> Well we were going to be inside for this so we forged ahead and enjoyed very much the orangutan who liked to wear her burlap sack on her head:

 

I was awed by the beauty of this parrot:

 

And a bit skeeved out by the enormous size of this capybara who is the largest rodent in the world. Ugh.

 

 When we finished up at the rainforst exhibit the weather had decided to be co-operative after all . We had lunch then visited the remainder of the zoo. I was so enthralled by my favorite animal, the giraffe that I totally forgot to pull out my cell phone and snap some close up pictures as all three of them fed from a perch right next to the viewing deck.  However I did remember to snap a quick pic as all of us laughed quite a lot over the antics of the meerkats

 

I figured we were all going to want to take part in the zoo's newest attraction, the Carousel of Wildlife, and we saved this treat for the very last. Created and built by a local carousel company each 'seat' is a different animal at the zoo. I of course choose to ride on the giraffe, my personal favorite, and from my perch I captured this cute picture of H & M:

 

It was truly a fun day. And no sooner did we reach home than thunderstorms rolled in, almost as if the weather was waiting for us to finish things up!