Adventure: Denver Zoo

Lessons from going to the Zoo after a snow storm:

1. Nobody else is crazy enough to go to the zoo when it's below zero with windchill and snow on the ground.

2. Over half of the zoo gets closed down for the weather.

3. They give the crazy people who do make it to the zoo free admission! (Not a guarantee, just my luck yesterday).

Jeremy  joined me for my trip to the zoo, saying he didn't want me to go by myself. I picked him up in my little Cobalt, my first time driving it in more than half an inch of snow, and we discovered that it gets stuck very easily going uphill. Very. Easily.

Oh, well.

We headed to the zoo, went up to the gate ready to pay our admission fees, and the girl looked at us and said, "It's actually free today." It was one of my favorite groupings of words to ever hear. She handed us a map of the zoo which had a line across it made with a blue highlighter. Below the line were the exhibits that were open, and above it were the exhibits that were closed.

Jeremy lead the way, having been to the zoo before. There were many sculptures around the zoo made from recycled trash. They had a lot of facts posted here and there about how much plastic is found in the ocean. It's a real tragedy, and it inspired me to be even better about my recycling habits than I already am.

We found the zebras, which if you know me, you know that the zebra is one of my favorite animals (I have two). They just had a baby zebra born earlier this month, but it was too cold for the baby to be outside.

Because of the weather, many of the animals in the open exhibits were indoors which made getting photos difficult, but I still had a good time learning about the animals and studying their movements.

The red pandas were quite active, except for one that was sleeping on a branch with his/her legs hanging down.

The tiger looked very bored and stayed put in his little place against the wall and napped the day away, occasionally looking up to check out what was going on.

Jeremy and I went outside of the Wild Cat exhibit and found the leopards outside. One of them ducked inside, so we ducked back inside, and I got this portrait when the leopard was practically posing right next to the glass.

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After the Wild Cat exhibit, we went over to the giraffe house. The giraffes are quite amusing. Obviously, they are tall, and they like to lean their head over the gate and look down at you, and their faces are just down-right amusing.

​Look how cute this guy is!

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We then went into this exhibit, I forget what it's called and I'm sure Jeremy will inform me of the name later, (Tropical Discovery, I later found out) where they housed the fish, reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and had some tropical plants growing all over the exhibit.

They didn't have any sea turtles, which disappointed me just a little bit, as they are my other favorite animal, but they did have a plethora of other types of turtles, including this one which apparently needed to stretch its legs.

There were a lot of peacocks wandering around the zoo. They freaked me out at first, but after a while I got a little more used to them since they were guarding almost every door going into the open exhibits.

We finished with the open exhibits and went snooping around a little bit to make sure there weren't any that we were missing. After determining that we had seen everything that was open that day, we went into the gift shop to try to find another little keychain animal for my red camera, since I have a zebra hooked to my black camera. I want a sea turtle for my other one.

We then went to Cherry Creek Mall to hang out a little longer, and then I dropped him off at his home.