Celebrating Memorial Day at Philadelphia Zoo About This Page:

[mpwife153]

Philadelphia Zoo ~ Friday,May 22, 2009
Cast of Characters:
ME - Heather (35), DH - Joe (33), DD - Brianna (4), DSS - Kameryn (9)
My DH & I wanted to do something for Memorial Day weekend, but since his days off are Thursday & Friday we knew we couldn’t go away anywhere. Thursday was out because I had a doctor’s appointment & DSS had school till 2:40. Thursday night I was online trying to figure out where to go & what to do that wasn’t too far away or too expensive either. DH wanted to go to the beach, but this early in the season the water would be way too cold. We thought about Dorney Park, but the travel time would time would eat up too much of our day. Then it dawned on me that the last time we had been to the zoo was 4 years ago. The plan was set. All the kids knew was that we were doing something on Friday, but we wouldn’t tell them where we were going.
We woke up Friday morning, had a quick breakfast, and loaded everyone into the truck. DD kept trying to guess where we were headed. We passed PHI Airport & she yells “I know! We’re going to Disney!!!” (I wish that was where we were headed!!!!) DH & I laughed. I told her we weren’t going to Disney till October for my bday. It was smooth sailing until we hit the Schuylkill Expressway. Anyone from the Philadelphia area knows that this can either make our break your timeline. We were OK until 676 merges with the Schuylkill. Then we just sat, crawled one car length, sat, crawled one car length. This went on for 40 mins!!!!! We did manage to watch the Zoo balloon take off for quite a few rides & see a few rowers on the river as well.

Channel 6 Zoo Balloon

Boathouse Row

First stop inside the zoo, the bathrooms of course I was not going to be hunting down a potty if DD had to suddenly go Unfortunately a few other mothers & school groups had the same idea, so we waited, & waited, & waited for our turn. After our not so quick pit stop, we watched the spider monkeys at Monkey Junction for a few mins. The kids got a kick out of then climbing the ropes & swinging. DH & DSS, of course, noticed one of the monkeys was taking his own potty break while swinging from one the ropes. What is it with boys & potty humor??????

Spider monkey
Our next stop was the Rare Animal Conservation Center. We saw fruit bats, porcupines, naked mole rats, lots of rare monkeys, & lemurs. DD & DSS both asked why the bats were smaller than the ones at AK in Disney (This would be a theme though out this zoo trip. My kids compare everyplace we go to Disney just like me)

Porcupine

Blue eyed lemurs
Continued on next post…….

[mpwife153]

Marmosets
Next stop was the Kangaroos. They were just lying around. Some were in the shade and one or two was sunning themselves. From there it was off to the Reptiles & Amphibians house. DSS loves frogs, snakes, alligators & crocs, so he was excited about this stop. We saw lots of odd colored frogs & snakes. I tried taking a few pics, but the glass always gives off some sort of glare so after a few attempts I just gave up in here. The King Cobra was pretty active and that made DSS happy.
Once exiting the R&A house you see Tortoise Trail. There was at least 5 or 6 giant Galapagos tortoises sand one male peacock.



Galapagos tortoise

Peacock

DSS, DH & DD watching the tortoises
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[mpwife153]

Directly across from the TT was the Pachyderms area. It was a warm day (high of 85) and the Rhino was taking a mid day dip him his watering hole.

Rhino
The elephants were very active and outside! Last time we were at the zoo they were inside & let me tell you, the smell in there was so foul I almost ran out of the door! You may notice I have more pics of animals then I do kids. Well, let’s just say they were not cooperating with Mommy on this trip. The few pics I have I had to sneak.

DSS & DD watching the elephants


Peek a Boo!
By now it was noon, so we decided to grab a quick lunch before heading over to PECO Primate Reserve. Luckily there was a hotdog cart right there! We got 3 combo meals (HD, chips& a drink), 2 extra HDs & a bottle of water for $23. What a steal! There was a nice shaded pathway that we plopped down on & had lunch. I was pretty happy with lunch. For the past 2 years we’ve been getting Chicken Dogs from BJ’s (Kunzler Chicken Franks ~ which are also Gluten free!) & have found that when I eat regular HDs I just find them, well, icky! They served Hebrew National Franks, which I are my least favorite HDs, but these were pretty good. Must be the Philly water

Did someone say lunch????

[Lemap760]

You got some great pictures of the animals. We were at the zoo today.
I knew we should've stopped at that hot dog cart for lunch.

[mpwife153]

Thanks! I have a bunch more I still need to resize. Last time we were at the zoo we made the "mistake" of going into a place to sitdown & paid way more the food wasn't all that great.

[chezp]

Sounds like you had a great time - you got some great animal photos.

[iamgrumpy]

Sounds like you had a lot of fun! I haven't been to a zoo in so long the last one I went to was in Switzerland of all places and that was *gulp* 9 years ago...when I graduated Highschool Where has time gone?

I should look for a zoo here and go to it. I'd to to Animal Kingdom but thats Notazoo.

[Mauimouse]

What a fun day at the zoo. Looks like you got to see a lot of animals.

[Colexis Mom]

Great pictures from the zoo!!

[mpwife153]

After we scarfed down our lunch it was off the PECO Primate Reserve. I believe these active little guys were called Sifakas. They were all over the place. The zoo keepers must have placed a bunch of grape halves all over the glass because one guy kept trying to jump up & reach one. He tried a number of times before he tried climbing a nearby rope & swinging towards the glass. He sure did entertain all of us who were watching him.

Next were the Orangutans. There were two in the enclosure. They were throwing hay at each other. DSS & DD thought it was funny they were fighting. Finally we went over to see the gorillas. I have very mixed feelings about them. There were three in the enclosure. One was sitting up in a window sill looking outside. Another was playing in the outdoor area and then returned to their gorilla door for some shade and a rest. The last gorilla, which was also the largest of the three, was just leaning up against the enclosure wall with piles of lettuce at his feet. DH & I both looked at each other & said at the same time “he looks so sad.” You could literally see it in his eyes. There were people all around the glass tapping on it & he would take a deep breath & look down. I broke my heart. DH & I talked about how when we were in AK back in Jan we had spent 20 mins watching the gorillas and it was so enjoyable. They were eating, playing; even play fighting with each other. They were happy, but this guy just wasn’t & we could tell. That was enough for me; we needed to go to another exhibit.
Right across from the PPR was the Bank of America Big Cat Falls.

Statue in front of Big Cat Falls

This enclosure was being built the last time we had been at the zoo so I was excited to see how it turned out. The Lions were first, but just our luck they are sleeping in the sun on top of their rock (just like on Kilimanjaro Safari, always sunning & can never see them!!) The path winds around the lion area & dumps you into a movie theater that has three screens in a straight line. It is a 3minute film featuring lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars, and jaguars. Some of the film covers all three screens and other times it shows three different scenes. It was well shot, plus it was nice & cool in the air conditioning J There was a jaguar enclosure.

DD watching the jauars

Continued on the next post………

[mpwife153]

There was also a cougar enclosure. There were 3 cougars in here (again napping)



Up next were the tigers. There were four rather large tigers, but again because of the heat they were all napping in the shade.


In front of the biggest viewing area they had a Zoo employee who was telling us all about Tigers & answering all the kids questions.

Finally the “Falls”
I honestly wasn’t that impressed with this area. I guess I expected a lot more since at the time they were building it they made it out to be this grand thing & IMO it wasn’t. The enclosure areas were pretty small and there were two small waterfalls (neither of which were in any of the Big Cat’s enclosures)
Continued on next post…….

[Ruth Andre]

Been there and done that, have been stuck there for over an hour before. AND OMG trying to go any where near 676 towards the Walt Whitman when there is a few sports events and a concert.

[Colexis Mom]

More great updates!!

[chezp]

More great updates - love the tiger photos!

[mpwife153]

Thanks so much guys! We just got a wireless router (finally!!!) & I'm hoping to knock out the rest of this TR fairly quickly now! It's so much easier to update in the big oversized chair while watching TV than it is at the uncomfortable, falling apart desk & metal chair