Zoo!
Posted By pamelamyers on June 17, 2016
It only took, hmmm…at least 3 years I think, but we finally took Sam to the zoo! I have been wanting to take her for ages but it never seemed to work out. My poor kid. She is probably the only almost 7 year old who had never been to the zoo. I was determined to take her before it got too hot this summer and we picked the day after she finished school thinking that a Friday would be less crowded, especially as so many kids are still in school. Sam has really been asking when we were going. She wanted to see real, live animals. I was excited for her to see them since I don’t think she really grasped how big they are. We didn’t even tell her we were going until she woke up that morning. What a treat for her!
A few weeks ago when I was on the zoo website, I was looking at the map and a list of all the attractions. Sam wanted me to tell her what some of them were and she told me she wanted to do absolutely everything. Boy, did she mean it. We saw a few exhibits and soon came to the camel rides. Sam was ready as could be to ride. I was surprised, truthfully. They are pretty big animals and I thought she’d be scared, but nope, on she went. Her camel’s name was Giorgio!
We stumbled onto the flamingos and Sam was thrilled. She loves those silly birds, even though she has never seen one in person before. Here she is doing her flamingo pose.
What seems like 5 minutes later, we came upon a face painter. Sam insisted she get painted, and she really wanted a snake. Ok, whatever floats your boat. It’s not like we are going to be visiting the zoo every other day, so we let her do pretty much whatever she wanted.
Ok, from all the pictures it seems like we didn’t see many animals, but we did! But pictures of Sam having fun are more interesting to me than random animals. Rest assured, we saw the lions, tigers, bears, apes, more mammals and reptiles than I can count, penguins, you name it! She saw them all, believe me. We didn’t miss a thing.
The one thing Sam wanted to do that I wouldn’t let her do is ride this tiny little train that was really meant for tiny little kids. It seemed so pointless. She was unhappy about that, but thankfully, we found the swan boats pretty quickly. Mark said he’d go with her and they had a great time. I am glad he went — you have to pedal with your feet to make it go and also steer and with my coordination, we’d wind up doing nothing but going in circles! Sam loved the boats! She was so proud that Daddy let her steer. Poor Mark. I think he did all the pedaling himself. Her little legs wouldn’t reach that far!
We went into the Lorikeet Encounter where you can feed the lorikeets! Sam liked that. You get a tiny cup of nectar and they come right up and drink it from the cup. It takes all of 2 seconds and it’s gone, so it’s not much of a thrill, but Sam loved it.
After feeding them, you can stay inside for a short while to just view the birds and this one bird really seemed to like Sam. It came right up to see her while she was talking to it.
Our last stop before leaving was a ride on the zoo balloon. That wasn’t there the last time I visited the zoo, so we all went up together. Sam liked the view from 400 feet above the ground.
It’s funny. I haven’t been to the zoo since I was young, and it seems so much smaller than I remember. I guess my legs can just handle the walk a bit better now. Thankfully, Sam didn’t complain too much. She was just so happy to finally be seeing the animals. I am glad I got to take her. It is something I loved doing as a child and I wanted to share it with her. Mark isn’t a big zoo lover (he doesn’t like seeing the animals so constrained) so I doubt we will visit much, but every child deserves the chance to see the animals up close at least once. It was worth every second we spent there, every dollar I spent (and it was not an inexpensive day!) For Sam’s smiles, it was totally worth it.
2 Responses to “Zoo!”
Leave a Reply
Please note: Comment moderation is currently enabled so there will be a delay between when you post your comment and when it shows up. Patience is a virtue; there is no need to re-submit your comment.
Wow. You must have spent a fortune at the zoo. The last time I went there which was 6 years ago it was $18 just for an adult to get in. So you really gave Sam the total zoo experience. Did you notice if there were any elephants. The last time I was there the elephants were being sent somewhere. It may have been the Pittsburgh zoo. Also, were the big cats walking above your head in an enclosed bridge. I always like to get a Carmel popcorn wheel when I’m at the zoo.
We spent a couple hundred dollars. Insane. But it was worth it. No elephants. They were all sent to a sanctuary I think. The only animals I saw in the overheads were some monkeys.