Day 16

Honolulu Zoo

 

I love this zoo because it's small enough for Lincoln to walk around the whole thing. He does NOT want to ride in the stroller,  he is so opposite of Ethan who wanted a stroller at Disney when he was 8 lol. Hoping he sleeps good tonight, since he got only a short nap today. Harrison has slept through the night the last two nights. Fingers crossed he's going to continue!

 All ready to head into the zoo.

 Had to eat lunch with these disgusting things all around me. There was a little boy chasing them towards us that I wanted to trip.

 Lunching

 He looks like such a kid here, not a baby :(

 Linky loved petting the goats.

 Ethan loved the arctic foxes.

 I always make them take a picture by the giraffes, they are never looking.

 how funny are her back legs? The other one was playing with a ball, throwing it up and catching it. I've never seen that before.

Almost looking, at least facing the right direction LOL

Honolulu Zoo

This zoo does not have adequate parking. In fact the only parking is public and it's right on Waikiki beach so of course there are no openings. We had to park next to a homeless guy that cleRly lives out of his van. I hope our van is still there when we get back.....

The zoo is small but cute. There is a lot of park area, nice landscaping but a lot of it seemed to be under construction. Link was loving chasing the nasty pigeons. He would chase, they would get away, he would cry. 

The elephants looked like wooly mammoths because they were covered with the lovely red dirt. They were active and moving around. The giraffes were awake too. Eating from a tree. 

Lincoln's favorite thing was the koi fish in the children's zoo. You could climb in a tube and be with the fish. He was so excited!! He kept saying "big fish". 

Harrison was a happy boy as usual. He just wanted to look around and watch everybody.

And then he fell asleep 

We went all the way to honolulu and the silly put your face here sign had to be a cow. 

October 16

Today we went to the zoo in Springfield. It was a nice day, and aside from the disgusting peacocks, the zoo is nice too :) It was decorated for Halloween, which was fun - next weekend is trick or treat at the zoo which would be neat, but we're heading to the pumpkin farm then.

The elephants & tigers were actually active, but a lot of the animals weren't. We did get to feed the giraffes - they were eating dead leaves that had fallen from the trees!

Ethan's favorite part was probably playing on the playground and eating popcorn and his snowcone.

st. louis zoo

Their goats weren't scary and trying to eat everything. They didn't allow you to feed them, just pet & brush them, so they were very mellow. Ethan was brushing one, and it started pooing, and he was like, why does it poop jelly beans?! Gross! Thank god he didn't try to eat any! We also learned that goats poo standing up, but squat to pee. Didn't know that!

Ethan getting eaten by a hippo!

My trader son with his build-a-peacock "Happy Happy Peacock"....so disgusting.

Ethan & Dawn on the train. Side note, the worst train ride ever at a zoo. We saw a nasty peacock and 2 elephants. The rest of the train ride was dark tunnels.

On the carousel, he wanted to sit on the penguin, and luckily it was still available. The one right next to it, was a "wild ass"....he didn't want to sit on that one.

I hope he doesn't try to strangle the real penguin when we meet one at SeaWorld! Ethan's favorite are the penguins, but he didn't like the way they smelled.

Checking out the giraffes, there was a cute baby one he really liked.

Dickerson Park Zoo

Bill's brother, Cory, is down to visit for the weekend, so we headed out to the zoo in Springfield today. I did enjoy the free parking, until I discovered that they allow the nasty disgusting peacocks to roam free around the parking lot. Not cool!!!

The actual zoo was nice (aside for the peacocks, peahens and peachicks!). It was very woodsy, and mellow. There was a little station by most of the major animals, were if you put a key in, it would play a song about the animal & tell you a little about it. E loved it!

The river otters were E's favorites, they are so cute, and the song talked about how they never grow up and play games all day. E liked to watch them go down the water slides & play follow the leader :) He watched them play for a good 10 minutes.

He also got his face painted (he picked a bee, as usual), and we fed the giraffes which was cool. E actually did it himself this time! They had 2 cute little baby ones, but they weren't tall enough to reach the platform, so he fed the "old" one he named Granny.

They had pretty much every animal you could want to see, except for penguins. It was a decent sized zoo, not like Racine zoo with its 10 animals. We would have headed over to the St. Louis Zoo since it's free, and bigger, but it's an extra hour drive (one way), so maybe sometime next spring.

We also stopped at a mall (woo hoo!!) on the way home, but they didn't have what I was looking for. But now we know (sort of) where we can find one. And the GPS didn't get us lost today, that's kind of a miracle.

Meramec Caverns & Crazy Zoo Place

Took the Envoy out for a drive today. We set out to go to the St. Louis Zoo, but it was raining, so we stopped at the Meramec Caverns which is about half way between here & St. Louis. It is the place where Jesse James used to hide out after he robbed trains apparently. Can't really imagine what it was like being pitch black in there back in the day with only a lantern. It has electricity throughout now. It was still really cool though. Ethan says he was scared, but he wasn't at the time. There were some very cool formations. The last one was the oldest one in the world I do believe he said, it is 75 million years old!! And very cool looking.














On the way back, there was this run down shack looking thing that said they had live aligators. So we pull over (since E didnt' get to go to the zoo) and it ended up being some crazy farm type thing with a lion (yes a grown male lion that our "tour guide" let lick her face!), 2 tigers, goats, emus, an entire room full of snakes that you could pet or hold, baby gators you could hold (E pet one, but didnt' want to hold it), tarantulas, turtles, frogs. It was crazy! And the people there were actually crazy. Our "tour guide" was some girl with piercings all over that was in love with snakes and for her birthday wanted to be bit by one.

E's favorite animal was the chickens, they were just runnign around loose. He was hoping there would be peacocks (evil child!), but there wasn't. Have to admit I was worried for a while when all these crazy animals were just popping up. Can a small aluminum fence hold in a lion??