Trip to the Zoo

Rob and I took a trip to the Reid Park Zoo this afternoon. We've been meaning to go for a long time. I have a thing for otters and as soon as we heard that the zoo has an otter exhibit, it was on the top of our to-do list.
It turns out our little Tucson zoo is completely awesome! There are way more animals there than we expected and the habitats are really nice. Some of them are smallish, but they are all laid out well and the zoo is really good about shade. I don't know how they did it but most of the habitats face east so they're much cooler and many of the viewing spots are shaded or in little tunnels so the visitors stay cool and still get a great view of all the animals. It is much more intimate than other zoos I've been to. It may not be as big or swanky, but the animals seem healthy and they were all visible.

Here I am in the aviary:


And here is our new friend:




The giraffe enclosure was fairly large, but this guy was hanging out right next to the sidewalk so that everyone could admire his pretty spots. And his weird tongue. He got so close he managed to lick the camera of a guy next to us. Nice!

We are definitely going to come back. They're building a new elephant habitat, so we look forward to seeing what that looks like. This trip we walked around the whole zoo and tried to see everything, but we've decided that next time we're going to pick out an animal or two to watch the whole time. Or maybe we'll just do one area. They have the zoo divided by continent of origin, so it would be easy to spend a lot of time looking at the South American animals or the African ones. Or just the otters. I'd be happy spending the day with the otters.

If you live in Tucson, we highly recommend the zoo, our hidden gem right in the middle of town. If you're not from Tucson, come visit and we'll take you there.