Skip to main content

A Trip to the Zoo

My husband and I, went to The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium specifically to see the new Africa exhibit a few weeks ago. This exhibit just opened in May and is roughly 43 acres. The area includes a watering hole, camel rides and an area to feed giraffes and more.  The keepers move different savannah dwelling animals in and out of the watering hole area throughout the day and they have cheetah runs twice a day. Keepers thread a string around some well placed round wheels on the ground and the winch pulls a grocery bag covered tennis ball around the large circular area which the cheetahs love to chase. Think lure chasing with big cats.



We also saw ostrich and zebra at the watering hole in the morning as well as some gray crowned cranes off in the savannah area. Next to the watering hole, is the giraffe feeding area. You can pay $3.00 and you get to feed the giraffe getting up close and personal with their sweet little noses and big dark eyes for you to see.



Just before the watering hole area, are camel rides, which we didn't do but its awesome for the kids. We also love the polar bear exhibit which was added about 2 years ago. The bears, both polar and non-polar, have a much larger area to explore and swim in.  Keepers were giving a presentation and tossing in peanut butter covered toys for the polar bears to enjoy.


The zoo is getting really large now with all of the improvements and we got there around 9:30am and left around 2:30pm.  My pedometer said I had walked over 12,000 steps or roughly 8 miles!  Seriously. My feet hurt.  Anyway, of course a lot of animals were hunkered down in the shade, hidey hole, tree stump or where ever they could stuff their furry little butts to stay cool and we didn't get to see them or see them well anyway. At least the bobcat was out.


I think its strange that I have to go to the zoo in order to see some common songbirds. I've always wanted to see a Cedar Waxwing, Blue Bunting, Eastern Bluebird and a Scarlet Tanager but I never have.  Maybe I'm just not leaving my house often enough? Anyway, I finally got to see all but the Tanager. If he was in the aviary, I couldn't find it. Seriously? How does a red and black colored bird hide in green trees? There was no missing the blue bunting. That little guy was very, very bright blue.




The other more wild birds we saw were the flamingos and the lorikeets, a parrot type bird from Australia.  The lorikeets exhibit has been around for a while and for a small fee you can feed them some kind of sugar water/milk like solution. They are pretty and seem friendly when they land on you to get to the little bucket you're holding but don't be fooled. They bite and they will steal your bucket.



All in all a great trip to the zoo. We had great weather to enjoy and got a lot of exercise in the process. If you haven't been to the zoo in a few years you'll enjoy the various upgrades but it is getting really big so you might have to go several times in order to see everything. 




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Trunk Show

On Saturday, January 17, I went to my local quilt shop, Quilt Beginnings, and everyone who made either a Jacobean Journey or Feathered Star quilt last year brought in their projects. Some were finished, close to being finished or still in pieces.  Below is my quilt.  Its brown, cream, peach and a melon like color.  The blocks have been really fun to do and putting all the blocks together have definitely challenged me and some of the other ladies I spoke with. The next two pictures, are of a mother and daughter and their quilts.  They have a similar theme with black, gray, red, white and dark gold color. When asked if they were going to attempt to do the next Hoopsister's embroidery quilt "Sewn Seeds," which there's a sneak peak of at the end, they both said, "Nooooooooooo." Also, these guys say they're novice sewers but I think they've graduated! This lovely lady, did her Jacobean Journey quilt in red, pink, white and a very light blue

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Block A3H8

We finally started the applique border blocks of the Jacobean Journey quilt this month and the instructions that I was given was a little... well, confusing.  According, to Hoopsisters the instructions for several blocks are the same so they don't want to print different blocks with the same type of instructions.  So their solution was to draft the instructions using a sample of the blocks with pictures for that one block. However, additional blocks do not get their own set of pictures but share the same instructions.  For example, if a block has only 2 fabrics (say 1 and 4) you follow instructions A, which will have pictorial examples of only 1 type of block, which may or may not match the block you are currently stitching out.  So this was fairly confusing for me since my Babylock doesn't show file names just pictures and my pictures didn't match the set of instructions (or so I thought) I received since the pictures didn't match at all. So my suggestion would be

Jacobean Journey Quilt - Block C4

We're finally seeing hints of spring with temps in the 60's and 70's.  Trust me we're really happy considering how cold and long this past winter has been.  Seriously makes me think of moving to California but everywhere has its own problems so I'll stick with the ones I know. This is the second month of Jacobean Journey Quilt and this month we were assigned to do two blocks - C4 and D5.  I'll discuss block D5 in another posting just to space things out a bit. I have to admit I'm glad we didn't start out with these two blocks first, although that's what Hoopsisters starts you out with. At our last class, there were approximately 20-30 women there who were doing one of two Hoopsisters patterns, either Jacobean Journey or Feathered Star.  Those who brought their blocks in did a little show-n-tell and all of them looked really good and everyone seemed really pleased with everyone else's. TIP: Prepare all your fabric first!  Cut the appropriat