The first thing you come to in the Zoo is the white Mountain Goats!  Vienna loves goats, we go out to Bauman Farms all the time and feed the pygmy goats out there… (God’s little joke to me, as goats are one of the few animals I can’t stand… though I must say they are growing on me).  We were off to a good start.  There was this neat statue right there, but there were so many people there that we really didn’t stop to see the goats much, but on our way out of the Zoo that night we stopped and took a photo.

We chose to skip the Great Northwest section of the zoo and headed for the Pacific Shores section.  Great choice!  Steller cove was amazing!!!  You go underground and view ocean creatures behind big glass walls.  It was beautiful without the animals, you felt like you were in a sea cave walking through a magical bubble of water.  They have done a great job of making it look more like habitat and less like cage!

One of the most exciting things of the day was when we stopped to see the Sea Lions.  They were swimming about and seemed to be playing to the crowd!  They swam right up to the window and were right in front of Sam and Vienna’s face! I totally missed the best shot of the sea lion coming right down eye to eye with Vienna and the look on her face!  But I got a second one that wasn’t bad.

To see the sea life so close and personal was fabulous!  The photo’s of the otters didn’t turn out very well.  The lighting in that area wasn’t so great, but they were great fun to watch.  They were having  a frozen snack when we came by and one of them was swimming around playing in the water (and we got to watch him under water!) So cool.

We headed over to the bears, but didn’t have very good luck.  The Polar Bear (one of  the things Vienna was looking forward to seeing) was asleep in a spot that you could really only see the top of his head. Such a bummer…. but there was much more for the day to be seen.  We headed off to Africa!!!!

Vienna loves goats, but she also LOVES Giraffes! There is this beautiful long path you walk, a bamboo forest really, that you walk through on your way to see the African animals.  Again, so much more habitat than cage, even for the people     We got to see giraffes, and even though they were far away (eating their “dinners”) while we were there, we stayed there for quite some time (and Vienna asked several times to go back to see them again, maybe another day when we have more time.) 

We skipped the Bat exhibit for now… Vienna’s had enough bad dreams of late, and reptiles too, and headed off to the African goats, yes, more goats, then over to the Zebra’s and Hippo’s.  These were all fascinating. 

Early on in the day I was ready to name this blog “Back Sides” because most of what we saw of the African Animals were their back sides!!  The Zebras were also huddled in for a bite, bottoms to the viewing post, the Hippos, though close, were also bottoms to us, laying about in the sun.

Vienna was fascinated by the Zebra’s all the same!

The rhino… well he’s a back side for an entirely different reason. ***yep, I’m going to do it, I’m going to totally be me and talk about things that just aren’t “kooth” as my mother would say*** He was quite intriguing to me… it was amazing… have you ever seen a rhino pee??  WOW it is soooo forceful! It’s like the fire department turning on one of their hoses in short bursts!!!  Couldn’t believe it!! and I just can’t believe that I actually caught it “in action!” it just fascinates me.  Yes, I’m fascinated by rhino excrement, yes, I understand that is weird!!  But check it out!!

I wish you could have been there! It really doesn’t translate on film or in pixel form.  ***yes, I can see, even feel, my dear sweet Sam shaking his head in shame at me, but hey… it’s why he married me… my “charm” ha ha ha ***  There were lots of “excrement” moments that day.  We caught the goat doing both #1 & #2, the nasty little penguins and their stench (ok, cute, but oh so stinky!) and of course Ziva’s diaper   but we’ll just skip those for now

Walking through the Vollum Aviary was great, we probably blew through this place too fast.  I would have loved to sit on a bench in there for a while, and Vienna was upset when we left that we left too soon, but she had a hard time seeing the birds with her two year old eyes.  She just couldn’t find them if they weren’t moving, and when they were moving it was so hard to “track” them that she had a hard time keeping up with them too.  But the vegetation was fascinating enough. 

Then it was time to stand in line. It was time for us to wait our turn to see Samundra, Lord of the Ocean, our new baby elephant in the Oregon Zoo (don’t ask me why “Lord of the Ocean is appropriate for an elephant, but i do like the sound of the name).  It was hot, but thankfully most of the line was in the shade… but we didn’t expect it to take TWO HOURS for us to get our chance to see the little punk!  Vienna did great waiting in line.  She kept us all entertained, and behaved quite well, thank the Good Lord for that!!  and when we did get to see Samundra it was so fun.  He was the reason really we went to the zoo.  Ever since Vienna saw him on the news (5 weeks ago) she has been asking to go to the zoo to see him. 

The first hour and a half or so was spent getting to the observation platform.  Once there Samundra decided it was time to nurse, and he did this right up against the retaining wall directly in front of us, so that no one could see him!!!.  We did get some entertainment from a chipmunk that ran across Sam’s shoes and was haning about (I think he wanted Vienna’s peanut butter cracker) After twenty minutes or so we finally got a glimps of the little elephant as he and his moma moved away from the wall. We didn’t get to stay long, they were shuffling people along rather quickly, even more so, I had to shuffle off and feed Ziva.

He was sooo cute!! I’m glad we finally got to see him, and that we waited in line.  It was worth it, just to say we did it, and to see Vienna light up when he was finally in sight!

As I fed Ziva, Sam and Vienna went to see the primates.  And just as they were exiting I met them and the frog caught Vienna’s eye. 

The Frog exhibit was closed for the day by this time, but she LOVED crawling onto this statue.  There were a ton of other little kids playing on it, but Ziva decided she didn’t get enough to eat, so we let Vienna play with them while we sat there and watched.  We were the last to leave the area (it was very close to closing time) so we got a great photo of us girls

I did get to see this one monkey with Vienna, she giggled a lot.

The last thing we saw as we left the Zoo was “The” bears.  Just as fascinating and exciting to Vienna, and I dare say as real to her as the LIVE bears… were the bears outside of the gift shop… they were HUGE!!

I only took the photo of the one, but there are two that are just giant stuffed animals.  Vienna was afraid of them to a point.  She reached for my hand so I would take her up to them… she gave this one a hug (with me standing VERY close, but wouldn’t go near them without me … she quickly noticed I was too far away when I backed up to snap this photo and came running back. 

All in all it was a glorious day! Full of blessings and very little temper tantrums (for a two year old, I call that miraculous!)

Can we go again tomorrow???