Well all I have to say about the San Diego Zoo is that it is HUGE! I'd been there as a child but of course could non remember. I did my research and came up with a plan. Unfortunately the size of the park through my plan way off.
First, here we are entering through the giant elephant topiaries at the entrance. DD5 is still making the scarey pose we had done for the photog. carmera.
The photog. offered to take the picture with my camera, then he proceeded to take his own picture. Too funny.
Granita ended up spending almost $80 on shirts for her and the girls and copies of pictures they took. (Sucker
) They had us make a scared look then made it look like we had tarantulas and snakes in our hands. It was a cute picture. There was another where DD5 had a Meerkat on her head. They are cute. If I get a copy from Granita I'll scan them in. Granita loves zoos.
So, my plan was to first go see the Panda Bears, then take the bus tour to get our groundings and decide what we wanted a closer look at, then the air tramway.
We immediately asked at the info booth the best way to get to the pandas and set off. Three hours later, (I kid you not) we had still not made it to the pandas. We started by following her directions then took a slight detour to watch the gorilla presentation. Very interesting.
Then we proceeded to get completely lost. So we looked at a few other animals until we got more directions. At some point we went through the aviary and took a wrong path and ended up going to the far lower right part of the zoo by the giraffe when we had been headed to the center top part. So we were walking up very steep hills and found that even the zoo personel had problems explaining how to get to the pandas. We saw a bus and began to walk very fast after it. I had no idea when it's next stop was but I was determined to GET ON THAT BUS. DD5 was in a stroller thank goodness. Lucky for us we did do about 1/4 mile of speed walking but did catch it at one of only 3 stops that it had. You have NO IDEA how happy I was to plop down on that bus and let it take us to the pandas.
(Why hadn't the info lady just suggested this in the first place?) One panda was sleeping in the tree but the other was walking all about. We felt very fortunate to see so much movement.
So, we had made it to the pandas. We had lunch and our next mission was the Polar Bears which on the map was very close. We took this very neat moving bridge through the jungle trees only to find out we took the wrong one. When we ended back up at the aviary exit I was about to sit down and cry.
While I enjoyed everything the zoo had, it was now hot and I was super frustrated with getting lost over and over again for more than 3 hours.
Luckily two of the most helpful and kind zookeepers walked by right then. I think they could sense my despair because they gave perfect directions on how we could get back down to the entrance, then take the air tram straight to the polar bears. And that is just what we did. All was well with the Universe once again.
The kids zoo was right by the air tram entrance so we went through there first. We saw the tiniest little monkeys (mice size), I should have taken a picture. We did find some photo ops!
Yes, Granita also bought the girls some plush pandas.
We never found the red panda Granita was hunting but when we exited I told her no way was I going to go on another search. Especially since we see the red panda everytime we go to the Denver Zoo.
The air tram was very nice.
It really proved how HUGE the zoo was. Had I done the air tram first I never would have attempted to walk everything first.
At the top of the tram we found our way easily to the Polar Bear and a few other animals.
I had really wanted to do the bus tour but by then we all were pretty tired. So we started to head out. (Which took over an hour.) Granita wanted to look at our pictures. And proceeded to buy one of everything. I couldn't help thinking we should save our spending frenzies for Disneyland but ofcourse I couldn't say that since the girls didn't know. Then Granita and Hope wanted to make a picture postcard. Of course we couldn't remember where that was so we were on another mission to find that. (Are you catching the theme of today yet.) Then our last detour was my fault. We were told that the picture postcards we by the koalas. So, of course I had to go check out the koalas.
We were finally leaving. I did enjoy the zoo but if I ever get to do it again I will very first do the bus tour, then I will take the air tramway to up to the Polar Bears and walk DOWNHILL the pandas.
Here the girls are wearing their new shirts.
This would be our last evening in Coronado. Tomorrow we were heading out on a train to an unknown destination!
