Our Trip to the Zoo

Our first trip to the zoo.....we decided to go to this zoo one Sunday afternoon after church. We loaded up & hit the road & when we got there it was a zillion degrees & humid. This was the first picture, Rylie's first flamingo sighting! She seemed to like them.

Next we went in search of the giraffes...they were doing a giraffe encounter where you could feed them, and they are my favorite, so we went to find them. On the way, we saw this tiger. The pictures aren't so great, because of the glass, but you can see how close he got to Rylie. She loved it!

Another picture of Stewart & Rylie & the tiger!

Another tiger pic...why, you ask? Because right after this one was taken, the trip started to go south. First, the camera battery died....we forgot to charge it for the spontaneous trip to the zoo. Remember the giraffe encounter I mentioned earlier? As soon as we found the giraffes, a guy hung a sign on the gate saying "show canceled today". That is when the humidity cranked up to levels that only a crocodile could appreciate. Then came the thunder!!! As the skies blackened, we were determined to see ALL of the animals before we left, so we ran for the hippo house. As soon as we got there, the bottom fell out. We consulted the map to find that we were in the most polar opposite location to the front gate that we could be, but decided to make a run for it. We thought we could at least make it to the gorillas, so Stewart set out in front of me with Rylie in her stroller. Pretty soon I realized I couldn't run in wet flip-flops, so I yelled "keep going, I can't run!" and darted into the closest thing to shelter that I could find....a crate they used to transport Rhinoceroses! There were 3 other people huddled in the corner already...the rest of the box had water pouring in through the air holes. It was then I realized I didn't have my cell phone! So, I made small talk with my new found friends in the rhino crate until the rain went from "torrential downpour" to a "heavy rain" and ran like a bandit to the monkey house. Stewart, not having heard me scream to"keep running" was worried & had no idea what had become of me. We waited for the rain to let up, but sensing that it wouldn't in the near future, once again we ran for the entrance. This time we made it, and as we reached the car, wouldn't you know it....the rain stopped. Ahhh, such is life!