I am so excited that after more than 2 months of being closed, our zoo reopened to zoo members only
last week. I had to go onto their website and reserve a day and time as they are limiting the number of visitors. Masks are highly recommended but not required and I was pleased to see that most people were wearing them. The hardest part is maintaining social distancing, especially when everyone wants to see the same animals up close! The indoor exhibits had signs telling of the capacity limit and most people were abiding by that - except at the grizzly exhibit. The sign said limit of 8 inside the small area where you can watch the bears in their pool. Digger was entertaining everyone in the pool and so everyone was trying to pack inside to see him. You will notice from my photo that I was unable to get very close. I stood quite a ways outside the enclosure and stood on my tippytoes! But Emmet was happy to pose from me outside. When Digger is in the pool he doesn't usually let Emmet come in!
I woke up that morning, Tuesday, to wind, cold and rain! My timed entry was for 1 pm and it was starting to clear up by then. By 2 it was sunny and I was beginning to regret wearing my coat! The grill restaurant was open, but the self-service cup refill was unavailable. That was part of the info on the website so I took my own water bottle filled with iced tea. Had I wanted or needed to, there are hands-free water bottle refill stations. There were hand sanitizer stations at almost every exhibit and there were even a few portable hand washing stations scattered about.
The best part of the visit was seeing the new Water's Edge Africa exhibit which houses our hippo girls (back from St Louis!) and our new penguin colony. I don't think the photos do it justice! It is really wonderful! So without further ado, here are the photos from my first day back!!!
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| The Entrance to Water's Edge Africa |
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| The Penguin Beach |
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| Entrance to the Penguin Exhibit |
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| It must have been too cold to swim! |
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| I love this statue in the area outside the hippo exhibit |
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| The outdoor hippo pool |
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| Welcome back girls!! |
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| The indoor hippo pool |
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| Lemur island is partly inside and partly outside |
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| The indoor hippo enrichment area |
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| One of Asha's silly poses |
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| 2 year old Kera is quite agile and quite active |
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| 2 year old giraffe, Viv, loves Bahati the okapi! |
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| One of our zebra brothers |
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| I was impressed with how high this peacock could fly! |
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| Can you find Bhutan, our snow leopard? |
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| Emmet was not happy that Digger got in the pool before he did |
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| Digger, enjoying an audience! |
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| Regal Ouray |
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| Kale, our female porcupine, sunbathing |
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| Our female beaver, Ginger, having a swim |
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| Roxie, our oldest gorilla at 43, was enjoying her time outside |
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| Aslan and his 2 siblings will be 5 in 2 weeks |
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I hope you enjoyed the photos. I have 2 reservations for visits next week! Trying to make up for lost time. It was so good to be back! Almost like a normal day!
