Wilde Zoo Day

Laura and I had planned to meet and go to the Hogle Zoo before it got too cold this year. We met on October 18... one of the last warm days of the year. It was fun spending the day getting to know Brett, Sarah, and Jake better.

Ok, so it's no big secret that I love going to the zoo. This was my second weekend in a row to go to a zoo (Tucson and then Hogle) and yet I still think the animals are awesome and take tons of pictures. Below are a few of my favorites... We got to watch the elephants eating their afternoon snack. I think it's fun that they make them work for their food. :0)


It was lunch time at the giraffe compound too, so they all came inside to eat. We got some really nice views... They're a lot taller when you're standing 5 feet away!

Penguins make me happy - it's just part of what they are. At the risk of promoting it way too much, penguins make me much happier after reading Evil Penguins with Kimmy when she was out here in September. This was one of the few times I've actually seen penguins in the water... and not on TV. I posted this video below because they really look like they're flying under water. Way cool!

Around 4pm, Laura and her family needed to head back home. Jake and Sarah had completed their zoo trip on the playground near the entrance and then we all took a train ride right past the bison on the hill. We'd had a lot of fun! Thanks Laura for bringing your family to share such an exciting day!

After saying goodbyes, I wandered around the area for a bit longer; I wanted to see if I could catch a better glimpse of my favorite animals. As dusk was approaching, many of the animals were a lot more active than they had been earlier in the day. Below are some pictures I got of the snow leopard and the tiger. Pretty fun stuff!

Confession: I know that I've moved away from collecting as many wolf knick-knacks as I used to, but I still think that they are my favorite animal and probably always will be. I spent a lot of time outside the little area where a lone she-wolf lives. Not long after I got there, she came down and wandered around. This was a really cool experience for me because I'd never been really close to a live wolf and had really only seen them on TV. She even howled a little while I was there... It was so cool that I probably looked really weird just sitting out there by myself grinning like a little kid - no shame! I also got a neat video, but it was being weird loading... But this just shows you how close she was getting. :0)

More of my wanderings consisted of my visiting This is the Place / Heritage Park for the first time since I'd moved to Utah... if not ever. It was really cool and quite different from what I expected. The monument area felt a lot like a church park, but there was Halloween stuff everywhere. Two days later I got to come back with my ward for Family Home Evening to visit the Haunted Village located further up the hill. It was a lot of fun... and I was proud of myself for not screaming (tho I did get pretty freaked out by the hag that followed me around for a bit).

Another thing I was excited to see was the monument that was talked about in General Conference at the beginning of October, called Eyes Westward, which is a replica of the statue that stands in Nauvoo facing east over the Mississippi River. I think it's awesome that they put the same monument on this end of the Mormon Trail as they did on the Nauvoo end... the bookends to the journey west.