Day 6 – San Diego Zoo

This is the day that we wished we had put in a day of rest into the schedule. It would have been nice to have had a full, last day at the parks, slept over and taken the train in the morning. It would have been a lot more relaxing and we would have seen the scenery between Anaheim and San Diego. We would have also had some time to explore Old Town in San Diego. We were right there but beside walking through it we didn’t get to see it. Overall I would like to spend more time in San Diego next time and see some of the thing that we just didn’t have time for.

Our day started of with a expensive ‘Taxi’ ride. We asked at the front desk for a taxi, a vehicle arrived and we got in. On the way I told I was paying by credit card and he called into dispatch to run my credit card with a $41 flat fee. This was considerable more that we were planning on. On the way home we ran into a guy who showed us around. In talking to him as we walked to the taxis we found that we were in a shuttle and they charge per person. The real taxi ride home cost us $20. Lesson learned either call the taxi yourself or make it clear to the front desk what you want. At least know the options and the costs.

This was our zoo day and while we did get to all of the exhibits, another day there would have been nice. They open the zoo with a flyby pictured above. I was lucky to get the shot. I had an idea for a project for Philip for next term. As we were walking around I watched high schoolers trying to get selfies with an animal from each of the endangered classifications. Since we are doing Scientific Classifications next term I am thinking of having him use photos we took and arrange them by classification. I want animals from each of the endangered classification but also some other variety. I am working on the rules that I am going to put on this activity.

The first thing that we did was head over to the Panda exhibit as we knew that it was gong to get busy we also knew that they were most active early. There were a couple of other people there but we could still move freely to get photos and the Pandas where moving around. I was interest to hear Philip say the names as they were Chinese and he could actually pronounce them correctly.

I also had the pleasure of meeting a fellow homeschooler. It was kind of funny because I spotted them as homeschoolers and thus inserted myself into a conversation, mentioning that I homeschooled. She confirmed that they were homeschoolers as well. So what gave them away. The first was it was just him and his mother on a school day. That alone wouldn’t have been enough. What really got my attention was how he interacted with the Zoo employee. He was asking very educated questions and it was clear he had been studying marsupials in depth. He was also well spoken and interacted with the employee on more of an equal footing.

Koala Bear

Ian’s favorite animals were the elephants. It was cool to see his expression as he saw a real one. For me it has always been the Gorillas and the Orangutans. I have always been fascinated in how closely they are related to us. For Margaret it was the snakes. She still wants one as a pet. We are looking at getting a Corn Snake or one of the smaller Pythons. For Philip it was the Opossum. That is his current favorite animal.

At the end of day we were trying to see the last of the animals. So there were very few in the park and the kid were running. One of the cages that they ran past held a cougar that thought it was fun to chase kids. It was interesting because he wouldn’t chase Philip but he would chase Ian. It was cute but a little disturbing. None of my pictures of the cougar came out. There was too much motion.

We have discovered that 2 large meals in a day are more than enough for us so breakfast was at the hotel and was a well stocked buffet. Lunch was 2:30 – 3pm and was large burgers so back at the hotel we were not hungry. We bought some cookies and milk and relaxed watching the Hobbit on HBO. We had not seen the movie yet so it was nice, relaxing way to end the day.

I will be posting more on our trip on a mostly daily basis so come back tomorrow to hear more.

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