Yesterday we went to the Minnesota Zoo . For those of you not living in MN this is the “big zoo”. There is also Como Zoo which is a smaller zoo near our house. Como Zoo is also free (well, free as in donations strongly suggested by the little old lady vlounteer who sits next to the donation box at the entrance.) The Minnesota Zoo is a pretty impressive place. Their outdoor habitats are pretty amazing. Some of them are so big it’s hard to spot the animals. This summer’s big event is the African Savanah. They brought in 5 different animals that co-exsist on the savanah and housed them all in one habitat so people can see how they interact (all though yesterday’s interactions mostly involved sleeping or wandering aimlessly). In the one exhibit there are giraffes, ostrich, wildebeasts, gazelle and zebras. At certain times of the day you can also buy crackers to feed to the giraffes, but we missed that part. The indoor stuff is also very cool. They have coral reefs, dolphins, sharks, tanks holding starfish and small sharks that you can pet, crazy looking sea horses and a whole Tropics Trail which has cool animals like tapir, tree kangaroos, otters, sunbears, lemurs (which we found out are extremely loud when they all start barking/howling at the same time), gibbons, tortoises, slothes, leopards, and other fun rainforest type animals.

So, Tim, Nicole, Kevin and I loaded Amana, Caleb and Lexi (and their strollers, snacks, lunches, waterbottles, diaper bags, and a few random toys) into the mini van and headed down there for the day. The kids seemed to enjoy the day. Lexi liked her stroller ride, Caleb liked people watching and Amana had fun looking at all the animals. Going to the zoo with a three-year old is always fun. There was a never ending stream of questions: why did the animals look like this?, why were they making that noise?, what is this called?, what is that called? but it was fun answer the questions and watch her run from animal to animal. Although I think the highlight of the day for her was running back and forth through a bamboo curtain.

You can see a few pictures of our day here.