Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

It's the last full day of Monica's trip. :( We spent our second day in San Diego at the World Famous San Diego Zoo. I'm still amazed how huge the zoo is!

We saw the Elephants:

And a friendly turtle statue:

And camels! I love them! They're funny:

And Monica was a giraffe:

And I was an orangutan: Doug put the sign in my mouth, it wasn't my idea. And I couldn't reach it to pull it out.

After this we drove home exhausted. It's been an AWESOME trip and everyone is dead tired. Another successful vacation!

Mbongo & Tankins

We went to the San Diego Zoo today! The weather was gorgeous and we hadn't been to the zoo since July 4th!

Mbongo says HI
The sculpture was donated to the San Diego Zoo by Rachel Wegeforth. Mbongo was one of two male mountain gorillas captured in the Belgian Congo in 1930 by Osa and Martin Johnson. He and fellow gorilla, Ngagi, were donated to the San Diego Zoo in 1931 by Ellen and Robert Scripps(yes that's the same Scripps. She apparently donated EVERYTHING to Southern California. Seriously. You see/hear her name everywhere). Mbongo grew to be 618 pounds. The bust of Mbongo was modeled from life shortly before he died in March of 1942. The statue is right near the front of the gate; however, it only gives the sculpture details, nothing about the gorilla himself- it's ashamed it doesn't give more info, I had to look online to find out any details about him.

After visiting Mbongo and Ngagi, we took the Skyfari to the back of the park.
In the lower left of the picture you can see the seats of the Wegeforth Bowl, the amphitheater where they hold the sea lion show. The tall tower(200-foot California Tower) and shorter dome are both the top of the Museum of Man, "the city’s only museum devoted to anthropology. With its Spanish colonial and mission style architecture, the landmark building was originally constructed for the 1915–16 Panama-California Exposition. Today, a key focus of the museum is to create and display dynamic and educational anthropological exhibits about people and places throughout the Americas and around the world." Sounds like something you'd enjoy!

When you get off of Skyfari in the back of the park there's an exhibit of Tankins!
You can see him ontop of the rocks - king of the mountain! I love them!!

Dino Mountain...ROAR!!!

So we belated realized that we had the game yesterday, Wild Animal Park (the sister/companion park to the San Diego Zoo) today and Disneyland tomorrow - for an unplanned Labor Day weekend it ended up being quite the little holiday!

A friendly rhino greeted us near the entrance:



We had to go to Wild Animal Park this weekend to see

which closes tomorrow. Its been up all summer - we just never got around to it.

It's fun! You walk a little path that has 13 animatronic dinos, they move and roar and it's quite cheesy and wonderful. They give you a little Passport to

Join the Stamp-ede! Look for special stamping stations during your trek
through Dino Mountain and collect images of all the dinosaurs.

and you best believe we did (well I did mostly, although Doug did stamp one station)! And have pictures to prove it!

Outside the actual entrance is this little guy:

The very first dinosaur you meet is Styracosaurus (a cousin of the Triceratops). For whatever reason, Triceratops and Stegosaurus always reminds me you.


After many many other dinosaurs (including the wonderfully named Troodon and Wuerhosaurus and the mighty Tyrannosaurus [who had her babies with her! awwww]), we came upon Pachycephalosaurus, Doug's favorite:


And this was just too perfect to pass up:

Love you!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Fourth of July! For the Fourth we headed down to San Diego (I think that's as far from Boston as you can get and still be in the USA!).

I made friends with the hippo:

and saw a friendly lion:

Doug met a large ground sloth (who looks like he's about to enjoy a bite from the HI AMY sign, num num num):

After the zoo (and a Monte Cristo sandwich from Bennigans) we went camp on Harbor Island for the Big Bay Boom Firework show. The view of the city was pretty - it was fun to camp out and enjoy the COOL weather(what a novel ideal - cool in July)!


Boom!!!! Happy Fourth of July!!

THAT'S a Big Bird

On Saturday 23 May Doug and I took his dad and one of his friends to San Diego Zoo. It was the opening of the new Elephant Odyssey, a huge new enclosure that houses....elephants!!! And a whole lot more, lions and condors (Californian, of course) and jaguars and turtles and snakes. Anything that once lived in SoCal (Mammoths&Mastodons=Elephants, American Lion=Lions, etc)

And because I have no idea what it was...

Doug, of course, was like yah, it's a Daggett's Eagle, duh.