Jacksonville Zoo- Part Two

This trip was only a two day trip, but man did I snap a few pictures or what!?  Thank God for digital cameras, can you imagine the cost of developing this many pictures, then to buy an album? 

So where were we?  Oh yes, more snakes!

Outside of the snake exhibit was metal gator and there were a bunch of kids posing on it for pictures, so you know little man had to give it a shot too.

Watch out Animal Planet, he’s ready for his own reality gator wrestling show!

And what do we have here, Daddy on the metal monkey.  Like father, like son.  Little man thought Daddy was hilarious mounting that monkey for a posed picture, I admit I laughed too!

Cracking up at Daddy.

He wanted to be like Daddy and take a picture with the monkey.

This squirrel would NOT leaving us alone.  I guess they are used to people feeding them, but this thing was like following us and we were trying hard to not run him over but I mean come on get outta the way!

These monkeys were so scary looking.  They looked like burnt people, I couldn’t stand to take too many pictures of them.  Not to mention when we first walked up they were doing the hankey pankey, thankfully my babies are not old enough to ask “what is that monkey doing to the other monkey”.  Although I did enjoy listening to the momma standing beside me try to explain that to her little girl.

Now that’s what I am talking about, cute monkeys!

We could not have asked for better weather.  When we first got there it was raining and we were worried about what that meant for the rest of the day.  After the park opened the clouds cleared out and by the afternoon it was sunny and warm.  Awesome weather for an awesome zoo day!

The butterfly exhibit was next, it was neat but honestly I was not that impressed…therefore only a few pictures were taken.  I did find these little mushrooms interesting.  It looked like they took tree trunks from clearing the land and made concrete toppers for them and painted them to look like mushrooms…different!

This was the komodo dragon (I’m really not sure if that is how you spell it).  That was a large animal and very boring.  He just looked at us.  I mean I don’t really know what I expected a komodo dragon to do but compared to the monkeys, he was pretty boring.

Some type of bamboo that I thought was interesting.  I have never seen any like this before…anyone know what it is called??? No, me neither!

After a few stops to smells the yummo honeysuckle we were on to Australia.

I took a LOT of pictures of this bird.  I love the coloring of his feathers and the shape of his beak.  He was so neat to me.  Plus I could get super close to him and he didn’t move one bit.

These two birds remind me of me and hubby.  I think they may be called “love birds” but I’m not sure.  But if you look closely you can see the one bird is biting the other.  Like me and hubby picking on each other all the time, its just what we do, how we show our affection!

Baby girl did not get to see much of Australia, she took her a nappy nap. 

While she was sleeping, I wanted to feed the giraffes with little man.  It was so fun and he really enjoyed it!

When we first past the elephants they were still sleeping so we had to go back to Africa and see them before we headed out.  It was neat, when we got there this guy was mixing mud by taking water from the pond putting it on the dirt mixing it to make mud and then squirting it on himself.  We watched him do this for a good half hour, so interesting.

By that time, baby girl was awake and we took them to ride the carousel.  I was being lazy and did not want to change my lens so imagine me taking these picture by hanging off the alligator as it went up and down and the entire carousel went around…dizzy does not even begin to explain it!

She realized “crap, I need to hang on”

Next up the tuxedo palace, aka the penguins.

After that we took the kids to the play zone for some water fun before heading to the train for our ride out of the zoo.

Little man was so excited to get to ride the train.  It was funny when we first got there he said “TRAIN?” like a huge question.  We told him, yes buddy we will get to ride it later…he looked at us like NO WAY.  He has never seen a train in person before so I can only imagine how excited he was.

We were able to see some behind the scenes stuff on the train ride.  It was neat to see where the animals actually live.

After the zoo we headed back to the hotel to clean up and went out to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner again and back to the hotel for some down time.

Saturday morning, our intention was to get up eat breakfast shop around a little bit and head out around lunch time.  The babies woke up early and the shops did not open for an hour after we got done with breakfast so we decided to head on home.

Some pictures of the town center that we stayed in, it was so nice and pretty.

There was a turtle pond that was the center of the town center with little bridges and pretty flowers.

We were all pooped by the time we headed home.  It was a fast trip but it was a relaxing one.  We had such a great time and are so thankful we were able to take a trip to get away but not be too exhausted when we returned home.  I know we really enjoyed it and I think the babies did as well.  We cannot wait to take the back maybe next spring.