Phoenix Zoo

We continued to play and enjoy our Arizona time. Kyle's mom treated us to a really nice dinner out while she watched Grant in honor of our anniversary. Yum! We also took Grant to an incredible park in Mesa that evening. In the summertime, the parks are really busy at night. It was bizarre to me to see every basketball court filled and lots of kids playing on the playground equipment at 8:30pm. I can understand the reasoning however because at that time of night, it was still in the mid 90's. Yuck! Grant wanted to see his latest obsession (ducks) and had been bothering Grandpa for days to go since he had been promised that he could go see some Arizona ducks (we go multiple times a week to the river at home). Friday, the forecast looked a tiny bit cooler, so we decided to wake up early and head to the Phoenix Zoo. We picked a GREAT day to go. There was a great breeze and some cloud cover. It was amazing how 93 degrees felt more like 80 after the week's heat.

We naturally used the really awesome scenery to get some snapshots of Grant and Grandma.

The glare from the glass makes it hard to see, but there were two orangutans that were just getting their breakfast. They had to scavenge around to find where zoo keepers had hidden their food and in one box, there was a roll of papertowels and a wet washcloth. The female finished eating and then came over to the glass, used the paper towel to wipe her face, and then used towels to clean the windows. It was incredible to see her imitation of what she sees every day. 

This zoo also has some really great splash pads and places to cool off. While we were waiting for the monkey exhibit, we went to play on this one since the zoo had just opened to the public and no one had been there yet.

There is a huge lake in the middle of the zoo and each of the several islands there have a different exhibit on the island.

Can you see the red tailed lemurs? Pretty cool that their home exhibit is this little island!

We were told by a zookeeper that the Phoenix Zoo is the only one in the nation with a walk in monkey exhibit. We got to walk down a little trail and soon we spotted about 20 monkeys up in the trees and playing on the ropes that they have in the exhibit. This little guy is about 3 feet away from Kyle and Grant.

We took a train ride around the zoo (which was good because after walking around only about 1/4 of the exhibits, we were all tired!) and got to see both and lion and the tiger up and alert! Unfortunately, the train didn't stop long enough for really great pictures...

As we were getting ready to leave the zoo, Jerolyn wanted to take Grant on the carousel. We hoped he would love it, but once the movement began, he decided that this wasn't really for him!

First time around, he waved at us, but I think he was really trying to get me to come and save him!

Traumatized. 

We ended off the day with another splash pad and a great slide. Grant was the only one there and he went down this slide at least 20 times. So fun!