Jurassic Park

Today was Zachary's class field trip to the zoo! All four of us went along, and Meh and I got to wear bright orange "Chaperone" stickers. Not sure if it's the time of year or just the specific day, but there were a serious number of kids' classes descending on the zoo at opening time - we counted seven buses arriving before even entering the zoo proper. The weather was cool and overcast, which some of the zoo docents indicated would be a plus for getting the animals out and about; thankfully the rain held until our drive home.

Our first stop was the gorillas, and it was very special to be the only people approaching their enclosure at the time; two of them were eating, and Zachary and Owen both enjoyed watching them for a bit. When we continued to another viewing area (where several more were still cozily snoozing in curled up balls), another of the gorillas actually turned toward us and started interacting with Zachary. I think (hope?) it was a friendly human-imitative gesture:

We also saw tapirs, elephants, penguins, a peacock, and a variety of other animals - more pictures here. But of course Z's favorite part of the park was the dinosaur exhibit they've got going on all summer. Animatronics with noises (and some even "spit" water) and a good sense of scale (some 1:1, most 1:2) had Zachary looping through the exhibit a good three times before we exited. Of course it ends in a gift shop, and both boys were checking out little toy dinosaurs, though thankfully when we said it was time to go, they just "cleaned up" by putting the toy dinosaurs back in the bucket intact.