San Diego Zoo

Monday morning Mike and Bree got up early and packed everything up. After breakfast we checked out and loaded up the rental. We drove down to the San Diego Zoo and made it just as it opened. We asked a guide what we should hit before it got busy and he suggested the Panda exhibit. We ran through the fern trail and hit the Panda exhibit in time for breakfast. The Giant Pandas are indeed giant; and yet they roll around gently eating bamboo.

From there we continued on the main Park Way to see Zebras, dik diks, and head towards the Polar Bear Plunge. The bears were sleeping, not very exciting. We walked around the whole park, seeing probably 90% of the animals. The bird aviaries were amazing, with the 300 mm lens we were able to catch full frame shots of some great birds. In the beginning of the day it sprinkled occasionally but we had sweatshirts so we were ok. It was sunny, drizzly sunny again all morning.

We saw elephants, rhinos, a sloth, lions, California Condors and a black jaguar at the new Elephant Odyssey exhibit. The black jaguar was gorgeous and you could just see his spots as he moved. It is difficult to shoot through the nets of the exhibits because our cameras autofocus on the net rather than the animal. So we had to manually focus; which is hard when you're shooting a black animal doing laps in his enclosure.

We also saw another jaguar in typical golds and browns that was feeding. As we approached his enclosure a keeper was going to feed him. She knew her meal was coming and was pacing near the door. The keeper got her into a smaller portion of the enclosure with a gate while he went in with the food. He put the food (a giant knuckle from a bone that was almost a foot across) underneath a large bowl about 3 feet in diameter. After he left the enclosure he let the jaguar out again and she could smell the food. It only took her a few moments to realize it was under the bowl. The bowl was meant to engage her and keep some of her hunting skills tuned. She had to try to lift the heavy bowl to get to her food. She tried just to paw at it, then to dig under it and finally managed to get her body halfway underneath it. We never saw her successfully get it but it was fascinating to watch her try. It looked like a normal housecat playing with a toy; it was just a really big cat. Because she was right up against the netting she was about two feet from us. It was awesome. :)

By midday however, it started to absolutely pour. We tried to cover our cameras with our arms but we're still worried about them. We saw that everyone else had ponchos they had bought from the gift shops, not much more than garbage bags. We thought about buying some but realized we wouldn't be able to take pictures wearing ponchos. So we decided to buy one and cut it in half. We wrapped each camera in half a poncho and kept going. It poured off and on for the next few hours; we ended up drenched. We pushed on til the afternoon when it finally dried up.

We saw the new hippo exhibit, walked through the Hippo Trail, Monkey Trail and Tiger Trail to get there. We saw camels, llamas and marsupials of all sizes. One of the cutest things we saw were meerkats, they definitely know how to pose. There were also more baby Red River hogs that were running around. The warthog was so ugly, he still wasn't cute and just ugly. One of the oddest things was a capybara which looks like a two foot tall hamster. Very strange. A lot of the exhibits are quite expansive and really setup for the animals. One had a combination of several monkeys and an otter. The otter wanted up and the monkey wanted to play so the otter went back in the water.

After seeing the last of the park, we headed back to the airport to drop off the rental car. Mike loved the rental car. We got a Prius which was an experience. We got an average 47 mpg for 250 miles and it cost us less than $20 to fill up the tank before we returned it. There was actually quite a bit of room and the features were cool. There was a graph that displayed the power you regenerated with the brakes or a graphic that showed you were the energy was coming or going (into battery, from engine, etc). The gear shifter was odd, you had R for Reverse, N for Neutral, D for Drive and B for we don't know what. There was a P for Park button and an on and off button instead of an ignition. All in all a great experience from Hertz actually; we were really impressed.

We got to the airport almost 2 hours early so we settled in to wait to go home. There was a small puppy in a carrier that made the most high pitched yelping while we were waiting and Mike dreaded it being on our flight. Even though we took off about 20 minutes late we landed only 10 minutes late. Pamela picked us up and we were home to Beau by 10pm.

It was a great trip but a lot crammed into just a few days. After Bree downloaded the pictures, we ended up with:

1477 total on two cameras
463 "best of"s to share
<200 posted online

Be sure to check our picassa site to see pictures or facebook!