Hot Time at the Columbus Zoo

Kat:
As we were fine tuning our route north back in St. George I had to convince Ry that a stop at the Columbus Zoo was worth it. By the end of our day there he agreed it was. Ryan's parents know the Hannas, as in Jack Hanna the famous animal guy from TV, who also happens to be the director of the Columbus Zoo. Sandy, Ry's mom, was excited for us to go, so she pulled some strings to hook us up with VIP passes for the day. We had been planning to remain at Hueston Woods for Friday night, but crappy weather and the girls overwhelming excitement to get to the Zoo early pushed us to exit Hueston Woods and make our way toward Columbus. Friday evening we stayed in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, and we were up early Saturday morning so we could spend the whole day at the zoo. We snagged our passes and headed straight for baby Nora along with a few other hundred determined zoo goers. Nora is the nine month old polar bear who is only out for about an hour and a half each morning. We stood in line and peered through the crowd to see her swimming about in her pool.

It was hard to see her from above so we headed to the underwater viewing area where we got a nice view of her cute little fuzzy butt.

From there we did what Ry called the "Oo, oo, oo, Kat Tour" of the zoo. I will admit I have a bad habit of wanting to see and do everything, this is true with my art making as well which also drives Ry crazy. We zigged and zagged our way back and forth across the zoo sweating profusely but having a great time. We watched the tiger cubs get baths from their mom, a Bonobo family deal with squabbling children, chatted with a very bored and old gorilla, Colo (the first gorilla born in captivity), fed the giraffes, lorikeets and stingrays, watched a very entertaining show filled with many trained cats, dogs, pigs, birds, as well as a rat, a flock of doves, a porcupine, and a skunk and we kept Kinsey on board by promising to "feed the Kinsey" ice cream.

One of the reasons we kept going back and forth was because I wanted to hear the keeper talks. In the end the only one we ended up hearing was for the tigers.

After the cubs got there treats mom came over to clean them up.

Posing with a statue of Colo

Zoë trying to practice good gorilla etiquette 

Feeding the Lorikeets

And of course I get pooped on.

Feeding Kapoa (I think, the name was something close to that)

Feeding the stingrays small fish, which they vacuum from your hand!

This is Kinsey prior to feeding ice cream

SO we fed the Kinsey

Look how happy!

This show was filled with all sorts of adorable antics

We ended out day our day in the water park which is attached to the zoo. We didn't have any pictures from that portion of the day because we locked the camera away and my phone had died. It was a great way to end the day though as we were all ridiculously hot and sweaty. The girls enjoyed running around on the big slide and play structure as well as the wave pool. All was good other than Zoë convincing me to stand in line for the Cyclone slide for an hour in front of a pair of local couples who were drunk and all kinds of inappropriate. Zoë assured me she had heard it all before at school (great) but not in such a concentrated way. Sigh. Columbus Zoo definitely lived up to the hype and I would recommend it to anyone headed through Columbus. I loved that throughout the zoo there is a consistent message about conservation, down to labeling the trash cans, recycle and landfill.