After about a week of rain we were supposed to get a couple of dry days so I thought I would take Madison and Jackson (along with their mom) to the Dallas Zoo. It was pretty cloudy that morning and when we took the Zoo exit off of 35, the sky opened up and just about flooded the place for 45 min’s. We sat in the zoo parking lot for a while till it let up some and then went to the ticket gate. Luckily the zoo has a great big cover over the ticket booths so we hung around there for a little bit till it slowed down to sprinkle. As soon as we got in the park we had to take a restroom break and heard this guy saying “Hello” over and over again. He wasn’t in a cage or anything, just sitting in a tree outside the offices.
Madison and Jackson had some “nature” things that they had collected and so we first went to the Nature Exchange so they could drop their stuff off and build up their points so they can eventually pick a treat off the shelf. The kids have to sit and listen to what the Nature Expert has to say about what they brought in but me and Jackson got a little bored and wondered outside to see what else was in the Childrens Zoo.
We found a fish tank but Jackson was more interested in the poop that some animal left than the giant fish that were swimming right next to him.
Then we found a bridge that over looked a duck pond.
And a couple of donkeys from the movie Shreck…
And finally Jackson just had to burn some energy and just started running around and jumping off of things.
Once Madison was finished with her nature expert she ran out to join in on the fun.
Then we found a few interesting birds.
So once we finished with the kids zoo we moved on down to what’s known as the Zoo North. And we came across the animals.
Then we made it to the Bird and Reptile building. (there’s to many birds at this zoo)
This guy was hanging out just outside the door going into the building.
Once inside the Bird and Reptile building they had a new display going on called Ghost of the Bayou and they had a couple of white crocodiles.
Then we saw some of these…
Next on the list were the penguins. Gotta love these little guys.
And this guy liked hanging out with Madison.
Next up was the gorilla habitat. It’s always a little unnerving going over there ever since once of the gorillas, Jabari, got lose and hurt four people a couple of years ago. They have raised some of the walls and added some rocks so they can’t get a running start to make the leap. There are still a few area where it looks like if they really wanted to, they could get out if they tried hard enough. Kinda makes for a more interesting visit. Besides, I could take a silverback lowland gorilla…..
Came across a few more crocodiles and a few tortoise.
Moving along we headed over to the Chimpanzee Forrest.
Then Jackson made out with one of the statues…
We found a few Meekats just hanging out.
By now we’re about halfway through the zoo and hop on the monorail to go see some more African wild animals.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the monorail but we were lucky enough that since the park was so empty, we were the only ones on the monorail and got to sit in the conductors car and got a one-on-one tour where we could talk and ask questions about the animals we came across. The kids seemed to like it and Jackson was full of all kinds of questions and random sayings.
Since it had been raining all week and that morning, there really weren’t to many animals out being as active as they normally are so we headed on home and I conked out at my parents for a while.
And for a few more pics from the trip to the zoo, please visit my flickr site.
