Adventures from Home: the Zoo

Way back when, now about 6 months ago, I was frolicking around Milwaukee with my delightful and adorable younger sisters.  We have a bit of a tradition amongst ourselves that whenever we are all home we go to a Milwaukee field trip or tourist destination.  Most often, since we are most often all home together around the Christmas holidays, we go to the Milwaukee Public Museum.  This time, however, we thought we’d take advantage of being home together in the middle of summer, and we head off to the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Like the museum, we’ve been going to the zoo pretty much our whole lives, on school field trips and random adventures with friends.  When I first started college at Carroll, the school had a day outing to the zoo where we could meet our future roommates.  Being long-familiar with the exhibits and offerings of the zoo, we all have our favorite spots.  My personal favorite is the petting zoo and, for some reason, the very steep valley that goes under the zoo-train tracks on one of the main walking paths.

At the museum, we like to imitate the exhibits.  We tried to do this at the zoo.  It did not work as well; the animals keep moving!

We found being the topiary, signs and statues a much easier task.

 

Since we don’t come to the zoo very often, we decided to have an extra special treat and take a ride on the zoo train!  We all remembered liking the zoo train.  We did not remember it being so small!  Even Munchkinhead’s knees were up to her chest.   We had excellent timing for as soon as we boarded the train, a light drizzle started.

Rain continued on and off the rest of the afternoon, culminating in a fierce thunderstorm that made us feel like we were in Jurassic Park, all the more so for the scary dinosaur topiary with beady yellow eyes.

Standing in the foyer of the conference room building watching the wind toss around heavy tree branches, lightening momentarily sending spooky shadows everywhere, we decided to make a run for it.  To the aviary building.  Our umbrellas protected us from things worse than rain.