The Zoo

My brother Jesse's gift to the kids (and actually to all of us and Gina and Toby) was a trip to the Hogle Zoo. We went the night after Christmas to their Zoolights thingy. They open the park at night so that you can enjoy all the Christmas lights and decorations. It was really cool! Daytime trips to the zoo take place when lots of the animals are sleeping and inactive. But at night, you get to see a whole different set of animal activity. All the big cats are awake and prowling, the reptiles and owls are active, and it's feeding time for lots of them. Amazingly, we stayed warm enough and got to see all sorts of things we don't usually see at the zoo. Here's a lynx. They're usually sleeping or hanging out at the back of the enclosure, but this night they were right at the fence.

The red panda was awake and active. Usually they're just little balls of red fur. I didn't know how pretty they were!

I think this snow leopard was our favorite. She was pacing right in front of the window waiting for her meal and she was gorgeous! Her tail was long and bushy and her coat was amazing. I really wanted to pet her. She's usually sleeping and you can barely see her.

The cougars were also awake and pacing. They paced a longer trail than the snow leopard and they were harder to get a good picture of, but they were fun to watch.

We went and played on the park even though it was covered in snow. Toby went down this slide that was pretty long and completely covered in ice and he literally flew out of it. So we went Ryker down. He loved it and went several more times. Even with Brice at the bottom trying to catch him, he still launched like a cannon out of it and flew about 5 feet before landing in the snow.
Tia (Gina) bounced them all over the place on this see-saw thing. Ryker kept slipping off because it was icy, but they thought it was hilarious!

And just look at what my new camera can do! My old camera couldn't have done this in a million years even with a tripod.

To finish off the evening, we went to eat, went back to my parents' house for a movie and then we left for home. On the way home from the zoo, the other car had seen a herd of elk, so on our way home from my parents' house we went the long way to see if they happened to still be there (even though it was was about 1:30 in the morning). They were! We were able to get really close to them, but still couldn't get a great picture. It was really dark, so even my new camera couldn't cut through the blackness to get a focused shot. But this is the best we did get. There were at least a hundred head of elk out there. We drove around trying to find them and taking pictures until about 2:00 and then finally headed home. My dad was wishing Brice had tried out his new bow on these guys... Maybe next time. Elk burgers anyone?