A Day at the Zoo

We LOVE the zoo. Usually when James has a day off and we want to do something fun, we head for Brookfield Zoo. We're members of the zoo so we can park and get in for free which makes it an easy choice to just pick up and go. Being members has its perks because since we can go anytime we want, we don't feel as if we have to see everything at once. We usually stay for a few hours, see what we want to see, then head home. No guilt trip on not making the most of our trip if we only get to go once a year. Its so much more fun this way and we've really benefitted from our membership.

James had planned to take a 4 day weekend because of Labor Day so on Friday we headed out to Brookfield. We stopped at Starbucks first to have breakfast, which we haven't done in years, and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere. Blake is very social and waved to all of the baristas while smiling and saying "hi". The weather was the first cool day we had in a long time-early 70 degree weather!! The perfect day to spend outdoors.

At the zoo, I wanted to see the new dolphin show and at least try out the Petting Zoo since they were closed the last time we were there. This trip I was able to take more pictures since there were less people around and since Blake was more aware of what was happening. As he gets older, its fun to see him get excited about the animals and recognize what's what.




James and Blake ready for some fun!

As we made our way over to the dolphin area, we stopped by to see the big cats and we were in luck because the leopard was right at the big glass viewing area which enabled us to see him up close!




Someone put their hand up on the glass and the leopard did the same thing. His coat is just beautiful!




Blake was super excited to see the leopard. He laughed and got a big smile on his face.


Usually the dolphin show is extra but we get 4 free tickets included in our membership. They were closed down last year as they renovated the entire dolphin arena. Apparently they are celebrating 50 years of having dolphins at the zoo and they revamped their whole show as well. I was really hoping it wasn't going to be like the Shedd Aquarium's new dolphin show. They renovated last year as well and spent millions of dollars on their new enclosure and redid their show as well. We saw it this past spring and it was awful. The animals hardly did anything and the show was more focused on an audience member participating by going to a "magical world" of sea creatures, or something equally lame. They did special effects with lights and big screens that covered the entire view of Michigan Lake so it was dark and hard to see. Really really awful.



Waiting in line to go into the show.

A bright and cheery dolphin area!

Our little family.


Thankfully this show was nothing like the Shedd's! They had plenty of awesome dolphin "tricks" with lots of jumping in the air and splashing of the audience. Very upbeat and entertaining. Blake loved it.

Watching the show.

Clapping and saying "yay!!" when the audience clapped.

Dolphin showing off.

We really enjoyed seeing the dolphins and what they can do. They are such beautiful animals!

After the show we went to the petting zoo. Blake liked getting up close and personal with some of the animals and kept trying to kiss them!

Petting the goat's ear.

I think he kissed the back on this one. :)

Two goats butting heads. Not sure if they were being nice or starting a fight. We moved away just in case.

The goats were pretty much the only animals one could touch. They also had cows, horses, ducks, chickens, sheep, and a variety of big birds like owls and hawks.



We walked over to the elephants after the petting zoo since those are one of Blake's favorite animals to see. Then we took a photo op by the rhinos.

The zoo has a new bear exhibit which we saw last spring and were not super impressed with. The bears are hard to see because there are so many areas that they can hide in so its not always great for viewing. But we decided to try it out again and see if the bears would be more active this time since it was a cooler day and we had better luck with the other animals this day.

They have a herd of bison in the bear area. They even sell bison burgers at the cafe over there.

The entrance to the new exhibit. There are bison on top of the bridge.

We didn't really get to see the grizzly but we did get a few good shots of the polar bears. One was pretty close to the glass water viewing area and he looked as though he wanted to go swimming but wasn't sure about it. I'm still not wowed by this whole exhibit but at least we had better luck with the bears this time. We finished off our day by walking around to see the giraffes and zebras before heading home. It was a nice and relaxing day and we had a wonderful time. Until next time!!