Saint Louis Zoo

Lately, it has been warming up quite nicely in St. Louis. Yesterday, it actually got up into the 50s! As such, we decided to go to the Saint Louis Zoo. One really nice thing about the zoo in St. Louis is that it is free! Another nice thing is that we live 5 minutes away from the zoo, as it is located in Forest Park. Isidora has already been there 4 or 5 times, and with all my upcoming time off, I'm pretty sure we will be going there a lot in the coming months - at least until it gets too hot to go.

Growing up in Oregon, I have pretty high expectations for zoos, as ours was really neat and had lots of enclosures that were more "modern," I guess - i.e. fewer cage-looking things, and a lot more open areas that simulate natural environments. The Oregon zoo is also pretty spread out and has a neat variety of animals, including a section on Northwest animals, with cougars, eagles, black bears, elk and wolves. Unfortunately, they closed my favorite exhibit, the Alaskan Tundra (where they had musk oxen, caribou, owls and wolves) to open a new exhibit called Predators of the Serengeti. At least they will have lions there again.

Little did I know, the St. Louis zoo is larger (90 acres vs 64 acres), has more animals (22,805 vs 2200), and more variety (810 species vs 260 species) than the Oregon Zoo. And, I must say, I really like the St. Louis Zoo. Not to mention (again), it is free! My favorite thing at the St. Louis zoo is the penguin enclosure, where you can practically reach out and touch the penguins - much better than the one in Oregon, which is all behind glass.

These are from October, when Katee and I took Isidora to the zoo. Here you can see how close the penguins are, that thing on the bottom right corner is the glass at the edge of the enclosure.

Here is Katee pointing out the penguins through the glass to Isidora. It really is amazing how close you get!

So, enough of the explanation, and back to our visit yesterday! Here are some pictures!

Isidora really liked watching the orangutans. They were jumping around a lot and were really fun to watch.

Outside of the ape exhibit there is this giant gorilla - aka obligatory photo stop for all passers-by.

Izzie liked looking at the fish in the hippo enclosure, but wasn't too interested in this hippos that swim by right up against the glass. Oh well.

We had a great time!

Afternoon in the park

So, what do we do when we're both home, lunch is over, and the weather is awesome?
Why, we go to the park of course. Forest Park that is. For those who aren't from St. Louis, Forest Park is awesome. It was opened in 1876, which is kind of a long time ago. It was also the site of the 1904 World's Fair, which was kind of a big deal. At 1,293 acres it is one of the largest urban parks in the nation, and over 50% larger than Central Park in New York*. There are some much bigger "urban parks" in the country to be sure, but Forest Park is actually right in the middle of the city itself, which is quite small. Now that you're tired of my Wikipedia impersonation, let's see some pictures. Actually, a video and then some pictures. Whatever.

A couple interesting things here: Izzie is definitely saying "Daddy" in the video, which is nice. Also, there are people playing handball and racquetball nearby, so that explains the weird shouting in the background. Furthermore, just because she is swinging doesn't mean she can't hold on to her little cup which still has a couple raisins in it. Lastly, she has not lost a mitten, she merely preferred to wear both of them on one hand at the time. What can you say. Kids are strange.

Izzie can't drive 55.

Unorthodox sliding technique.

I'm not sure what you call this thing, but it is cool.

Looking relaxed on a big people swing.

More unorthodox sliding techniques.

At this point we started to think maybe she was getting tired.

Awwww.

Okay, that's all for now.

*I've decided that one of the themes of St. Louis is that we are awesome and big well-known cities like New York are overrated, at least when it comes to living there. This is basically the whole point of Meet Me In St. Louis, after all. Also, the Mets are pond scum.