Pieces of Me: San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park

(July 29th)

Nathan had a class to teach for work down in San Diego today, so the boys and I tagged along with him and spent the night at a hotel. The boys loved the breakfast buffet in the morning and I loved getting to bum around with them all day while Dad was at work!

With our newly renewed zoo memberships in hand, we dropped Nathan off at work and headed for the San Diego Wild Animal Park. I love that our memberships get us admission to both here and the zoo, because it really makes it feel worth the money. The boys had both been here before, but Eli was only about 4 and West had just been born, so they didn’t remember much of it.

I didn’t have my nice camera with me, so try to look past the barely-adequate photos, ha!

Ah, Eli, my poser child, ha!

First thing off the bat, there was this adorable little hedgehog guy that was out and ready for his closeup. He was so cute and looked just like Martin Freeman! Although, I don’t think the woman holding him liked my joke. (In case you don’t either, here’s a link that may explain…or not.)

We were there first thing in the morning, and we came across these adorable meerkats that were just waking up and getting ready to start their day. I love how they were lounging in the morning sun.

Then the boys tried their hat at living in a nest, pretending to be bat-eared foxes, and living in said bat-eared fox’s den.

Then we saw the most adorable little guy! A fennec fox, who was just running around his habitat and looking cute.

Seriously, I wanted to take that guy home!

We wandered over to a little mini park and found some statues to climb on and some drums to play.

(West finally feeling what it’s like to be as tall as Eli!)

And some actual proof of my existence! A miracle! :)

Sidenote: Don’t you just love my hat? Okay, it may be a little large, but I love it because I finally have something to protect my freaking hairline from getting sunburned! That’s been the bane of my existence the last couple of summers because I never remember (or want) to put sunscreen in my hair and I always end up with a terribly burned scalp, which turns into the lovely look of dandruff a week later. So yeah, I bought a big, floppy hat. And I love it in all its ridiculousness.

Moving on! Next stop was the bats, which were just freaky-deaky! They look kind of cool, but there’s no way I’d want to come into contact with them out in the ‘wild’. Seriously creep me out.

Unless, of course, they were these bats. Then I’d be okay.

Next up, we made our way over to the tram ride that goes around the park. Thankfully, that’s a free trip included in our memberships, so we can enjoy it as many times as we want. We had a really cute gal leading our expedition and we got to see a ton of animals!

I won’t bore you with all the animals we saw, but here are some of the highlights:

In that photo, you can just barely see a rhino and her baby (right behind the giraffe). Our tour guide said this was probably our best shot at seeing that baby on the tour, and sure enough, once we had made our way back around the circle where we would be closer to them, the Mama and baby were gone!

Here’s another rhino taking a rest in the shade.

After cruising by the lions…

…we ended up at the perfect time to catch a bird show. It was so cute and well done, we saw lots of cool birds, including my favorite secretary bird! I was too mesmerized to take any photos, whoops. But the highlight was when Eli got chosen to go onstage and help with one of the presentations! He was super excited to be picked and said to me afterward, “Mom, I was crossing my fingers so hard so that I would get picked!” Too cute.