We decided to go to Tampa's
Lowry Park Zoo on our last day in Florida. It's rated #1 by Parents Magazine, and, again, we could get 50% off with my zoo membership. Before we went, though, we ate breakfast at The Waffle House and then dropped Nate's co-worker and his family off at their cruise ship. Oh, my. I knew those ships were huge, but had never seen one up close before. Wow. It was fun to be down there and see all of the excited people, though I was slightly jealous that we had to leave the wonderful weather that night. :)
Judson fell asleep in the car right before we got to the zoo, but we found a nearby Starbucks and killed some time that way. We eventually had to wake him up, but, like the rest of the trip, he held up really well despite the lack of sleep.
We really enjoyed ourselves, though it was very hot and poor Judson was awfully red-faced. It is a great zoo...really nice exhibits (large habitats for the animals), interesting animals, etc. There were some free rides there including a big carousel, a behind-the-scenes-tram, and I don't know what else. And there was even a fountain area for little kids to play in, but we didn't get to that (or the rides).
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Such a big boy! |
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A really cute orangutan baby |
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These monkeys put on quite a show swinging all over the place. |
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One of my favorite exhibits - the manatees. They're kind of ugly, but I really liked seeing them in real life. They were all rescued. You can see where the first one got hit by a boat's propeller. (They were eating. The floating stuff is lettuce.) |
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Blurry, but so cute! |
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Looking hot and tired. We were VERY thankful to have our stroller with us. Thirty-two pounds of toddler gets heavy really quickly! |
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Judson loved feeding the giraffe. Our camera missed the action, however. :) |
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I forget what this guy was called. He reminded me of something out of a Bill Peet book. If you're a mom of kids over two and don't know about Bill Peet books, I highly recommend them! They're old, but you should be able to find them at the library. Such terrific stories! | | | | | | |
Petting the goats was about the last thing we had time for. After that, we headed to the airport to turn in our rental car and eat dinner at Chili's. It was near our gate and normally priced. A perfect way to kill some time! Little did we know, there was a GREAT play area right across from our gate. Judson got to play there for about twenty minutes and was so funny. He was laughing, shrieking, and carrying on the whole time. People actually stopped to watch him. Please excuse the stained shirt. We made a mess with ice cream at the zoo. I did have pajamas to change him into, but figured he'd be cooler on the planes in his current outfit.
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Nate almost got stuck while crawling through the tunnel under the slide... :) |
We flew out at 8:25 pm and pulled into our driveway at 3:15 am (6:15 Florida time, of course). Judson slept a little and once again did very well overall. And then it was back to rain. Ugh...