Wednesday, June 15, 2011

It was a Zoo-tiful Day

After many days of indecision, I finally made up my mind and went to the zoo with the kids and grandkids.  The weather was the best - sunny and not too warm.  Rod loaded my scooter into the car on Monday night and the twins, Bubby and I left for the zoo at about 9:20 am. on Tuesday.   George and Kris and their family were going along, and after loading Bubby's wheelchair into the back of the truck, left with us.  As good as I am at reading a road map, that's how bad I am at reading picture maps -- that of the zoo is one such map.  We headed to where we thought the polar bears were, but ended up at the sea lions.  We made the best of my map reading.  I do realize that we are all about natural habitats for the animals, but you don't see a whole lot.  I was, in fact, a little disappointed.  Our zoo has one camel -- I mean really, we couldn't have two?!!  We have one rhinoceros -- ONE.  When we were at the zoo a year ago, there was a sign stating that the zebras had been transferred to another facility to "make room for more endangered species of zebras".  Well, still no zebras.  There were 2 black bears, one spectacled bear, but no brown or grizzly bears.


We do, however, have elephants.  An entire herd of elephants.  For only $10 (note my sarcasm) you can have a picture taken with the baby elephant -- they take two shots with your camera.  And they even let you pet the elephant.  And people were really all lined up.  But the picture turned out really nice.  The tall girl is stepdaughter, Jessica.  And we also have tigers, and got to watch the mom playing with three cubs.

The cost of food was outrageous.  George and Kris got 3 hot dogs, 3 orders of fries and a small pizza and the bill was $40.  We got discount tickets from our credit union, but still tickets for Kris's family was $32.  Same price for tickets for Mary's family since Kris's friend Allie went along.  But here's the kicker -- Jimmy came at 2:30 to meet Mary and the kids.  And even though the zoo closed at 6:00, they still charged him the full price of $14.00.  So, it was a nice but expensive day.

2 comments:

Nancy said...

St Louis has I think the last free zoo...no entrance fee at all..ever..You do pay enormous prices for food, but we take our own picnic...There are scads of picnic benches... We do pay for parking, but there is plenty of free street parking if you look hard enough...

It's too bad that other cities feel the need to charge for everything...

Conchita said...

Linda, is that you. You are my Linda, my classmate, aren't you? I love your blog. I hope to see you when I come back at the end of the month. I am staying with Shirley.