Oakland Zoo

In our 8 years of marriage I have come to realize that for having lived in California for more than 21 years, Ben has not seen very many attractions. So we have decided to do a bunch of little excursions every few weeks and knock some "to do's" off our list. The first being the Oakland Zoo. Of course this trip was as much for Easton as it was for anyone. He is a HUGE animal fanatic and we both knew this zoo would blow his little mind! Indeed it did!

We started our tour with the bear enclosure...and yes, hindsight tells me that it probably wasn't a great idea having my son dangle over a wild animal enclosure, even if his dad was right behind him.

Easton looooves giraffes, so we were super excited to see so many of them! Yes, I know, again dangling over the enclosure :(

I thought I would bust a gut watching this little giraffe try and take a drink from his watering hole. I'm guessing that since their legs are shorter than their necks that spreading their legs provides the balance needed to preform a simple act like drinking water. It was still so cute!

When we reached the meerkat enclosure we found what we thought was a dead meerkat and were about to alert a zoo staff member....

that is until Ben decided to preform a little experiment. He yelled really loud and woke the poor little guy up. Almost scared him to death. And then he curled back up and went right back to sleep!!

And of course we couldn't leave without visiting the elephants. One of my favorite books I have read is Modac, and ever since having read it I have been mildly obsessed with them, so this was as exciting for me as it was for Easton.

Normally I leave zoos feeling very sad for the animals cooped up in tiny cages looking so sad and depressed pacing back and forth. But this time was definitely an exception. The enclosures were some of the biggest I have ever seen. In fact some were so big that we could not even find the animals, for example the lions and tigers.It was fabulous! And the grounds were gorgeous. Half the time you would have thought you were walking in the wild with all of the animals. All in all it was a perfect day!