Let's Go to the Zoo

Yeah for a warm sunny day so we could go visit the Niabi Zoo one more time before it closed for the season. 

This sweet little zoo has grown so much over the years since we started visiting it. This year we bought a year pass since the kids pass was the same amount as a day admission. With the train tickets and free passes for guests and using it to get in free or half off at reciprocal zoos this summer and a few visits here, these passes were so worth it.

Today the highlight was feeding the goats. Rebecca thought this was the BEST THING EVER! She had no fear of feeding them. One time she accidentally got all her fingers in a goats mouth and it bit down on them. She just looked at the goat with a "what were you thinking biting my fingers" look and went on with feeding them. We quickly ran out of food, so the kids started picking it up from under the feeding stations. They ended up picking up way more then we bought. We could have easily spent an hour feeding the goats!

We put some food on Rebecca's babies head and the goat ate it right off. Rebecca thought it was so funny and wanted more food on her babies head. This little baby got picked to come visit the zoo with us today. We can't go anywhere with a baby doll anymore.

The Hippo Statue. 

We always get a picture on this guy. Every time without fail. Simeon was at a Boy Scout camp out in Nauvoo, IL a few hours away from us, so that's why he's not in any pictures.

 The kids always look forward to taking a ride on the train, but sadly it wasn't working today because of construction, so we did the next best thing and took a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. Ammon rode the cheetah behind the gorilla Rebecca was riding, so he could chase her!

 

We also saw some animals doing some funny things today. 

This guy was sticking his head out looking for some treats.

 When we walked back past the giraffes later we saw this guy licking the pole. The kids thought it must have tasted good.

 When we went to see the Gibbons they were swinging all over the place. This darker one found a leaf out of the fence and reached out to get it. It took it on the ledge above us, then swung down with his feet right above the kids heads. He stayed there and stared at us for a few minutes.

When we got to the elephant enclosure we saw this guy reaching his trunk over the wall. It looked like he was trying to bite the wall. After a minute he came back over with a trunk full of dry pine needles from the tree right outside the enclosure.

There are alot of new projects under way here at Niabi Zoo, that will be more finished next spring when it warms up enough to go visit again. We love coming to visit this zoo. It's a pretty small one, and we can see everything in about an hour and a half, and we drive an hour each way, but it's so worth it. Today we forgot all about the reptile house, so we will for sure be going again this spring.

Blank Park Zoo

 When the Niabi Zoo opened for the season we got Zoo passes, which got us into Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines for free. Sweet!!

Ammon LOVED feeding the Giraffe and the giraffe LOVED Ammon! This was a 1st for all of us. Rebecca wasn't so sure about feed it and really wanted to get away when it started licking at her skirt!

It was a hot day so we were kind of slow going and stopped and played on everything we could. The kids decided to hatch from an Emu egg, rest in a kangaroos pouch, take a ride on the train and take a break on the dino's vertebrae. I think for Rebecca feeding the Kio fish may been the highlight of the day. She feed them one piece of food at a time and watched them fight over and eat it. She had dad wrapped around her the entire time she fed them. There was a boy about 12 years old that was feeding the fish, then reaching down and picking them up. It was really nest to watch. We stuck to feeding and touching the backs of them.

Just as we were done seeing all the animals some very dark rain clouds rolled in. It started to rain so we decided that was our cue to be done. We took off for the van and within minutes of getting in the cloud burst open and down poured. Since we are so low on rain it was such a Heaven sent blessing to see. Some of the roads on the way to our friends the Aamodts house in Gilbert were flooded it was raining so hard!! We were so hoping that the rain would make the 2 hour trek to our house and water our yard!

We love going to Zoo's and checking out each one's fun attractions and animals. The Blank Park Zoo is about a 2 hour zoo with some fun playthings for the kids. It's a 2 hour drive away so it's not one we'd go to for a day trip, but it's fun to hit it once during the summer.