A Day at the Zoo

Despite the horrible heat and humidity we had the absolute best day at the zoo! I can't think of a better way to start off our trip than a rhino ride, albeit a very stationary one.

Grandpa with his girls...

and his boys.

The first of many poses with animal statues.

Eek! The snake house and the resident cobra!

If only he'd open that hood...

They have so many cool birds here!

A bunch of monkeys checking out Monkey Island!

We love all the big cats in Cat Canyon - they are absolutely beautiful!

And my personal favorite - the gorillas! Xander does a pretty good impression!

I was anxious to get back to see my favorite gorilla exhibit after the whole Harambe tragedy; this zoo does such a wonderful job with all its animal exhibits and their gorilla one will always be a favorite of mine. I could watch these guys all day!

Despite being older, these kids never pass up a chance to ride the carousel.

Usually at this point of our zoo trip we have to hurry over to the Africa section to catch the amazing cheetah run. But today we decided to do things a little differently. We have seen the cheetah run numerous times so we thought we would spend time checking out some other parts of the zoo that we don't visit as often. We slowed down our pace and ended up really enjoying some of the other exhibits, like the pacing rhino.

Hamming it up with the alligator!

Such a sweet picture with Grandpa!

Learning all about how to take care of our world from those environmentalists who seem to know best.

Did I mention it was a hot day? Enjoying some ice cream in the nice, cold ice cream shop!

Me and my cute Ciara!

Heading into the jungles of Southeast Asia!

And swinging like monkeys!

From quite a ways off we could hear this extremely loud barking noise. Turns out it was this little guy.

Boy, did he have a lot to say and he wanted to make sure everyone in the zoo heard him!

All of a sudden he dropped down and took off running for the building.

Turns out this big guy was coming his way. Maybe the orangutan was getting a little annoyed with all the racket he was making!

This guy sure is big!! The boys kept referring to him as King Louis from The Jungle Book movie.

Going a little primate while at the zoo!

The kids love all the interactive stuff!

Testing our speed against the chimps!

And then there was that time we were walking through one of the inside exhibits and my dad told me to watch out for the snake and I caught a glimpse of this huge coiled snake right down on the floor next to me and I might have had a complete freak out in front of everyone. But seriously...in the dark, that thing looked real! And we were at a zoo; any animal could escape at any given time, right?

Wonderful Uncle Bryan.

The kids love running into the zoo workers who have animals for them to touch and hold.

It was so hot that while we were looking at the African Painted Dogs dozing in the shade, one of them got up and went down to cool off in the water. I feel your pain, buddy! We were all sweating up a storm.

We were so excited to see the new hippo exhibit! They are so cool even though they did sleep the entire time we were checking them out.

Meerkat tunnel!

More interesting animals to touch!

Time to see the lions...

Savannah's favorite!

Ahhhh, the baby giraffe!

Thank goodness for these water fans throughout the zoo; I don't think we would have survived for as long as we did without them.

Little No loves his Uncle Bryan!

Another wonderful experience at the Cincinnati Zoo!