Today, its all about the animals...
We are spending the day at the Minnesota Zoo! We generally try to make it to the local zoo whenever we are visiting a new place (though none will likely ever compare to our experience at the San Diego Zoo). But its always fun to see rare and unusual critters, so we were excited to see what the zoo here in Minnesota had to offer.
Matthew made a new friend right off the bat:
While I found a much prettier companion:
To get the lay of the land, we took a little trip on the monorail first thing. It goes above the "Northern Hemisphere" animals, giving us a birds eye view of the bactrian camels, musk oxen and some other smaller critters.
The camels were shedding and super shaggy!
The ride was short, and when we got off the tram we trekked over to the Discovery Bay Marine Science Center for a dolphin show! We didn't go to SeaWorld when we were in San Diego, so this was the first time any of us had seen a dolphin close up. I took a ton of pictures, because its so amazing to watch them perform all these complicated tricks. I can only imagine the level of training it takes to get them to this point (and how cool it would be to work with such intelligent animals)!
As we continued our adventures around the zoo, we came across some of my favorite little animals - prairie dogs! These little guys get me every time, they are just so curious and friendly!
If you open this picture in a new tab, you can see the two babies on the left, frolicking around while the adults take a little nap. So cute!!
We saw a bunch of big cats, to Rowans delight:
We saw some cuddly critters, like these adorable little sea otters:
And some not so cuddly ones, like this little toothy gator:
And a bird with a crazy beak!
And of course, a zoo trip wouldn't be complete without the kids posing next to every statue they came across!
Another fun day in the Twin Cities - where will our adventures take us next?!?!
We are spending the day at the Minnesota Zoo! We generally try to make it to the local zoo whenever we are visiting a new place (though none will likely ever compare to our experience at the San Diego Zoo). But its always fun to see rare and unusual critters, so we were excited to see what the zoo here in Minnesota had to offer.
Matthew made a new friend right off the bat:
While I found a much prettier companion:
To get the lay of the land, we took a little trip on the monorail first thing. It goes above the "Northern Hemisphere" animals, giving us a birds eye view of the bactrian camels, musk oxen and some other smaller critters.
The camels were shedding and super shaggy!
The ride was short, and when we got off the tram we trekked over to the Discovery Bay Marine Science Center for a dolphin show! We didn't go to SeaWorld when we were in San Diego, so this was the first time any of us had seen a dolphin close up. I took a ton of pictures, because its so amazing to watch them perform all these complicated tricks. I can only imagine the level of training it takes to get them to this point (and how cool it would be to work with such intelligent animals)!
As we continued our adventures around the zoo, we came across some of my favorite little animals - prairie dogs! These little guys get me every time, they are just so curious and friendly!
If you open this picture in a new tab, you can see the two babies on the left, frolicking around while the adults take a little nap. So cute!!
We saw a bunch of big cats, to Rowans delight:
We saw some cuddly critters, like these adorable little sea otters:
And some not so cuddly ones, like this little toothy gator:
And a bird with a crazy beak!
And of course, a zoo trip wouldn't be complete without the kids posing next to every statue they came across!
Another fun day in the Twin Cities - where will our adventures take us next?!?!