Over the Mountains and Through the Woods!

To Seattle and Portland we go!

We made plans for a mini vacation to Portland in August.
At the last minute, Donald had a meeting with Boeing, so we added a night in Seattle on as well.

While Donald was in his meeting (all day), the kids and I drove to Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.
I haven't been to a zoo in ages and was eager to go.
It was a nice zoo and a nice day, but now I'm done again...for ages.

Here are some highlights of the day...

Ewww...who knew!?

This is a Komodo Dragon.
I have to admit that I actually thought he looked sort of cute.
Hannah informed me their saliva is poisonous, so I guess having one as a pet is not an option!

This one was pretty friendly though...

These primates are called Siamangs.
Never heard of them before, but they were pretty entertaining.

 They seemed to make an impression on the kids anyway.

Loved the orangutans!
They were putting towels and burlap sacks on themselves and then curling up to go to sleep.

Cute little lemurs.
They really wanted out from behind that glass though...made me sad.

The bats were so creepy, but so awesome too!

Fierce!

This bird area was fun!
For $1.00 you could buy a stick with seeds on it and hold it out for the birds to eat.

It was all going well until a flock of seagulls landed on the glass roof.

The birds inside went INSANE!!

They started to fly around the room in a circle making all kinds of racket!

I ran for cover!

I just knew that someone was going to get hit with flying poop!

Ivan has had bad luck with bird poop...

His upset expression in this picture is a result of just having been hit by bird poop.
I cleaned it off best I could, but the unpleasantness remained!
(picture from Nottingham in July 2005)

And this little guy did it to him as well.

So it seemed likely.
Well, the ruckus calmed down eventually and after a few more attempts at feeding the birds, we decided to leave.
On the way out, Ivan laid his hand on a rock.
You guessed it.
Poop.

The wolves were beautiful.
These were Ivan's favorites!

No real pandas at the zoo for Jenelle to see (her favorites).
But they were hanging out in the gift shop.

The gorillas were awesome!
They were really active and playful and fun to watch!

And so it was finally time to head back to Boeing for Donald.
Before we left, we took a quick ride on an old fashioned carousel.

And we were left with one lingering question that we have yet to answer...

Why?

 WHY?

Stay tuned for the second leg of our trip!