Animals

More vacation adventures...

Just about the time I'd start feeling jealous of all there is to do in the Twin Cities, we'd get stuck in rush hour traffic. Before 3:30 in the afternoon. Seriously. You couldn't pay me enough to move back and deal with that every day.

And so we made the most of our tourist status while on vacation, which included a visit to the Minnesota Zoo. Remembering the fun of Bear Country, Sydney insisted on carrying a map.

The first animals we saw? A large family of monkeys (Snow monkeys, perhaps?) AJ being a seven-year-old boy, he immediately had to ask, "Are they the ones with the red butts?"

Next up, we caught the dolphin show, which apparently will soon be a thing of the past. And based on the show we saw, it probably should be. There were a couple fun moments...

but overall it wasn't very impressive. (At least not compared to what we saw at Marine Land a couple years ago.) Here we got two dolphins, three trainers and a cheesy Olympics theme. But they did play one of Sydney's favorite songs, so she thought it was great show.

And then it was time for the monorail. While we waited for our turn to ride, AJ found another skull with which he could ham it up.

Once on board, he found a new way to annoy his sister. By coincidence, he took the seat closest to the window on the side of the car that overlooked most of the animals. AJ didn't want to look out the window because of the height.

But he also didn't want to relinquish his spot to his sister who really wanted to see. It was a swell ride.

I should know better than to visit a zoo on a 90+ degree day. The few animals we saw were sleeping in the shade. Not very exciting. Thank goodness the Zoo had other ways to keep the kids entertained. And cool.

There was also a climbling area where the kids could pretend they were the critters.

No, he's not pretending to be a spider. He's a bug caught in the spider's web.

Eventually we made it back to the special dinosaur exhibit...

...which gave AJ one more chance to strike his favorite pose.

I found the whole thing slightly irritating. We had to purchase an extra ticket ($4 each) to see the dinosaur exhibit. As we left it, we saw a sign saying we should save our tickes for a discount on the monorail. Never mind that we'd already paid full price to ride the monorail, why couldn't we show our monorail ticket for a discounted admission to the dinosaurs? Or why wasn't there a sign at the monorail suggesting we see the dinosaurs first? Cheap!

(Deep breath)

But the kids had fun. And that's what really matters. Until we got stuck in rush hour traffic on our way back to the motel. And it wasn't even 3:30 in the afternoon.