A Beautiful Day at the Zoo

Early Thursday morning found us heading out for the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. It is a bit of a drive for us, about 150 miles. One stop along the way to stretch our legs, a potty break and of course, Dunkin' Donuts, a regular event that we enjoy on our outings.

The day was gorgeous, blue skies, warm temps and plenty of sunshine.

When we arrived at the zoo, we were disappointed to see that it was very crowded. There were buses and buses of school groups. I was sure there must have been some event going on. Usually the zoo is not overly crowded at all. I spoke to the young woman at the desk and asked if there was some event going on. She stated that from April vacation until the end of the school year, they have an average of 900 school children a day! Yikes! She told us to not be too concerned that the kids start leaving around 1:30pm and then it is nice and quiet.

We started outside as the noise in the buildings was very loud. We took the Wildlife Trail. The kids loved seeing the animals and remembering our trip last fall. Today they were cleaning the pond. How funny to watch the zoo keepers trying to walk along the bottom that was covered with very slippery algae. The ducks, geese and flamingos seemed very unconcerned that the water in their pond was gone. There were several pairs of birds with little ones. They sat on the bottom of the pond picking at the algae.

Everyone was hungry after the walk around the trail and it was after noon. We enjoyed a nice lunch at the Jungle Cafe. By the time we were done with our meal, the school groups were gathering together getting ready to leave. In no time at all, the zoo was once again quite quiet and we were left to enjoy a more leisurely tour. There were other families with small children and a few grandparents with grandchildren, but the large crowds were gone. I know it sounds like we are terribly anti-social, but fighting our way through large masses of loud and often rude children is not our idea of a fun outing.

Here are some pictures of the animals we saw along the way. The keepers were giving the animals a snack when we went around the second time. This brought everyone out of their hiding places and we enjoyed some great view of the animals.

While we were watching the penguins, we spotted a baby bird hopping around the ground. He was in grave danger from being stepped on. I picked him up and noticed a female Cardinal frantically flying about. We figured this little one must have just fledged and landed down on the walk. We put him on a shrub off the path and in no time he was able to fly up onto some rocks and his momma rejoined him. Hopefully he did okay.

We had a visit at the gift shop and left at closing time. It was a wonderful day.