To make our drive back to Colorado from Kentucky more entertaining I planned stops along the way. This gave the boys a fun destination to look forward to and not just 'going home'.
We left our vacation rental early Friday morning, made a stop at Wal-Mart for new pants for me and then made a stop by Grandma's house to pick up Vinnie's water bottle. Then we got on the road, for our 5.5 hour drive to the St. Louis Zoo!
This zoo is free and we really had no idea what to expect other than seeing painted dogs! One of the boys' friends got to see wild painted dogs in Africa last year and I loved their pictures and videos, so I was super excited to see a new-to-me creature in a zoo.
We stopped at Five Guys for lunch about 30 minutes before the zoo. Vinnie did fine with the food but he did not like the smell inside the restaurant so we ate outside.
When we got to the zoo, we had to crawl through traffic to find a parking spot. The zoo is located in a park area where there are several different attractions and destinations for folks to spend a beautiful spring break afternoon.
We found a parking spot in the South lot and paid $20 to park the van. We were able to find our way through the parking lot to the zoo entrance pretty easily. There is no space to walk between the cars, so we were literally walking in the middle of the road in the busy parking lot.
The zoo has these gigantic lantern decorations all throughout. We saw quite a few different displays such as the butterflies lining the entrance, this giant dragon (for Chinese New Year?) and the snakes that the boys really liked. They obviously weren't lit up during the day but they were really pretty. They were made from fabric over frames.
We had been in the zoo and walking for probably 5-6 minutes when we came across this blue crab interactive light game. The boys all took turns playing that, but there was a line so we didn't play more than once.
The little kids liked looking at all the lanterns and ran around this area checking out a giant puffer fish and a spider too!
When we finally got onto one of the paths into the zoo we found the painted dogs. They were really hard to see, you had to stand in one corner of the observation area and hope that they moved.
After the painted dogs we moved onto the capybaras. When Percy was in his Encanto phase he LOVED the capybaras. I was surprised by how big they were in real life.
Another animal that we spent a lot of time with and really enjoyed was the hippos!
Sulley has never gotten to see them at our zoo (Cheyenne Mountain) because their enclosure is indoors and it smells pretty badly.
This zoo has at least 3 hippos and their enclosure was outdoors or you could view them from underwater in this viewing zone.
We could watch them surface and then we could watch them swim too. It was REALLY crowded in the hippo area though and we eventually moved on.
This area of the zoo was set up in a one-way circle, so we couldn't exactly go back and see them either without a long walk.
Further along the path was the cheetah enclosure. It was also near a hyena! I don't know if I've ever seen hyena in real life but they were like a VERY big dog.
Lucas had to go to the bathroom around about that time, so we got to watch the cheetah a lot. It got up and made some stalking behavior towards a squirrel but when it realized that the critter was outside the enclosure it laid back down. Then the cheetah decided to jump onto their house and sun themselves and we got to see them move about and stretch out!
We also got to look at seals, insects, and chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas.
The most pathetic polar bear was on display in another part of the zoo. It was just laying in the dirt, all brown and dirty. There was some ice dumped in the enclosure but the polar bear wasn't anywhere near it. We were surprised by how large its paws were though!
The boys really enjoyed the red panda exhibit. I think they are magnificent creatures but I was surprised that they had them in an open enclosure after the ones from the Norfolk Zoo escaped.
