Philadelphia Zoo 2012...

Before the end of the world (inside joke), Mom and I decided to take a day off to visit the Philadelphia Zoo. We set out around 8:00am and stopped by our local McDonald's for breakfast. After a round of breakfast sandwiches and orange juice, we headed out across town. We arrived at the north entrance of the zoo just before the gates opened at 9:30am. Our path took us along the main thoroughfare until we past the Impala cafe. Then we cut across to the opposite side of the zoo and went into the bird  house.

It was actually the first time that I'd ever been to the bird house even though I'd worked at the zoo many years ago. The highlight of the bird house exhibit was a small bright green bird with a long blue beak who flew up to us to get a closer look at Mom's wheel chair. The attending keeper advised that the birds are very curious about anything new in their exhibit space.

After the bird house, we stopped for a moment to eat lunch. This year, we decided to try something relatively new. I picked up a soft cooler that could be frozen over night and would keep its contents cool all day. It was much lighter than our traditional cooler and did a very good job of keeping our food cold. The night before, we ordered some hoagies from a local restaurant and cut then up into quarters. We packed up the sandwiches in the morning and they stayed cold all day.

After lunch, we cut back across to the side we started on to see the big kitties. Sadly, though, the big kitties were nowhere to be seen. One spotted cat hid behind a pillar and only its tail was showing and the tiger hid in an almost unviewable location, but, I did manage to get some footage of the tiger stretching a paw. After not seeing most of the big kitties, it was off to the south end of the zoo for camel rides for my two nephews. Unfortunately, my nephews exceeded the weight limit for the kiddy-sized camel and the adult-sized camel wouldn't be available until later in the afternoon.

After making the long trek from the north end to the sound end of the zoo, Mom was feeling the need to start back to the north end. And after the skies turned gray and began to rumble, we tended to agree and made our way quickly to the north end. We scored souvenirs, had a second lunch with the leftovers in our new and improved cooler and went home. The rain that promised to come never actually came in our area, but after hearing that several people got struck by lightning at a local Nascar event, I'm glad we got out when we did. All things considered we had a good time.