Zoo trip

This year it took me a long time to recover from day camp.  I'm used to a week of dragging around with no energy, but this year it took me two weeks to recover.  Part of the problem was a virus that ran through our family, we we all pretty wiped out for a while.  I finally started feeling better after two weeks and was ready to stop skipping summer fun that was on the calendar and start doing the things I'd planned!

Thursday I took the kids to the Woodland Park Zoo.  We got a late start, 10:00, but I knew we had the full day to enjoy our adventure.  When we arrived at the zoo, we had to weave through the crowd of about 200 children who had just arrived at a boys and girls club field trip.  Our first order of business was to put a bit of distance between the crowd and us.  We passed up the African Savannah area and went straight to the elephants.

There was a zoo keeper talking about the elephants so we stayed a while to listen.  Our next destination was the Northwest Trail where you can sit and see the bears and otters swimming in large tanks on either side of the viewing area.

But before we could get there, we got sidetracked at the raptors where a show was just beginning.  In this photo the presenter is swinging a piece of meat around for a peregrine falcon to grab in flight.

Elizabeth loves birds and enjoyed the show a lot.  The presenter encouraged people to build nesting boxes for owls and she's ready to get to work on one right away.

We made it to the bears and otters where we ate lunch while watching the animals move around and play.

We stopped in at the porcupine who was sitting right by the fence eating lettuce.  He looked so cute, I could see why they'd put up a sign, "Please don't touch the porcupine."  Later, Miriam said watching the porcupine was her favorite part of the zoo.  While we were there, he decided to see us so he started crawling up the net separating him from us.  She loved that!

After the porcupine, we each got a $1 seed stick to feed the cockatoos and parakeets.  We've been enjoying that part of the zoo for years.  When it first opened, it was filled with parakeets and a few cockatoos and parrots.  The only birds that ever were interested in eating off the sticks were the parakeets.  This time when we went, I noticed that there were less than 10 parakeets and they were all sleeping in the high branches.  I asked one of the employees what happened to all the parakeets.  She told me they had over 100 when the exhibit opened but they have a life span of 7-8 years.  The exhibit has been open for 7 years and there are six left.  I wondered to myself why they aren't replacing them.  Cockatoos and parrots can live close to 100 years.  The exhibit isn't as fun without the parakeets.

We were able to coax a few cockatoos to eat off our sticks.  Elizabeth liked it so much she decided to buy a stick with her own money.  The rest of us waited outside.

Sharing music while they wait for Elizabeth to do her second stick.  It's the first use for our new collapsable wagon we got at Costco.  It worked great!

Still waiting!  Isaac loves carrying around that tiger backpack which he's named Hobbes.

After a while she came out and said she couldn't find any birds to eat off her stick.  I went back inside with her.  There were about 30 children holding sticks in the air trying to coax sleeping birds to eat.  It looked like every bird in there decided it was time for a siesta.  We tried and tried but never got a bird to eat her stick.  We left the exhibit with a very disapointed girl.  Anastaya said, "I'm sorry you wasted your money" which Elizabeth took to be an insult and subtle dig so she had to cry for a while.

After visiting a bunch of our other favorite animals, our last stop of the zoo was the play area where Miriam, William, and Elizabeth burned off their extra energy while Anastaya, Isaac and I rested our feet.

Leaving the zoo, we wandered through the rose garden next door.

Elizabeth loved going around taking photos of the different roses.

Someone was having a wedding rehearsal in the gazebo.

I wanted to buy Mighty-O donuts which we'd sampled at Vegfest in the spring.  I knew they were somewhere around Green Lake (about one mile from the zoo) and figured I could just drive around and find them.  No such luck!  I did find a Vegan bakery where I bought a slice of caramel cheesecake and asked for directions.  She gave me directions but after driving around in circles a few times, we had to give up.  The kids were pretty disappointed.

Once we got home, I checked on google maps and saw that we'd been less than 1/2 mile from the donut shop.  I would have had to drive through a residential area to another commercial area I didn't know about.  I promised that the next time we go to the zoo, we will get some donuts.  They sell all vegan donuts and have been rated as some of the best donuts, vegan or not, in the nation.  I had to refrigerate my cheesecake before I could eat it because it had softened up so much on the way home.  Once I took a bite, I realized that although I really liked one bite, a whole slice was too much.  It was way too sweet for me, not enough rich.

It just wasn't my day to indulge my cravings.  I have a bunch of beets in the fridge and have been craving a cold beet salad with walnuts and blue cheese crumbles.  But I did not have any vegan blue cheese, so I'd looked online and saw that Seattle's only vegan grocery store, Sidecar for Pigs Peace, sells imported Scottish cheese called Sheese which supposedly makes a wonderful blue cheese alternative.  Although they carried Sheese, they didn't have blue cheese version so I left without it.  I did pick up some soy curls I've been wanting to try so the side trip to Sidecar wasn't a total loss!