Exploring the San Diego Zoo

Well, it's time tell you all about our final day in San Diego, on our most spectacular honeymoon. We've actually decided that our honeymoon will never end, so it's only the last day of stage 3 of our forever honeymoon. On Saturday, April 11th, we went to the San Diego Zoo!! The day started out with a little bit of rain showers, which didn't deter us... We hopped right on our bus tour and checked out all the exhibits to see where we wanted to set our focus... while on the bus, we were serenaded by a beautiful wolf who howled when we howled at it. Here they would have tried to sell us pictures of ourselves making contorted howly faces. Interestingly, the wolf is trained by a dog that they rescued from the pound as an "unadoptable" pet. I was able to take some decent pics of this elephant from the bus... Then, the bus ride was over and it was time to hike the hills of San Diego Zoo... Sadly, the San Diego Zoo did not live up to its larger than life reputation. I have been to too many great zoos to even come close to considering San Diego the best. It hasn't been kept up... the paint was faded on the exhibits, it all looks really drab and run down, there's lots of hiking between exhibits, the design is bad with exhibits on both sides of the walkway that you can't see unless you hike it all twice...(silly design really) and many exhibits were empty... plus the landscaping was overgrown and not kept up. It was kind of sad. I would highly recommend the Jacksonville or Pittsburgh Zoos over San Diego any day. Either way, we made the best of it.
I loved the playful koalas. There were only 2 zebras, and the camels (watch out, they spit) were all matted and foaming at the mouth... eek! The zoos claim to fame, the panda bears, after standing in the LONG line, were both asleep until one was called off to the vet, leaving the folks who had stood in the LONG line behind us to just look at the backside of the one. What really entertained my wonderful groom and I were the very wildly active meercats.There was a large and majestic eagle perched on a log in an oversized cage.Funny story about the polar bear, a huge crowd had gathered around the water tank viewing section of the exhibit, and all you could see was the back side of this polar bear obviously digging in the rocks for something very important, occassionally rising up for air, but persistly going back to this section of rock for whatever was down there...We grew tired of that and walked up to the top view just as the polar bear dislodged his prize...That's right, a little red ball. We hopped on the skylift ride and headed across the zoo to the sea lion and bird show, which was scheduled to start soon on the other side of the zoo. It was a beautiful ride across. You couldn't really see anything on the ground, but you could see several of the architectural delights in Balboa Park. Having grown up on the New England coast, I have a special place in my heart for sea lions, and I enjoyed the show.Then, we went into my first ever hummingbird aviary!!! I love hummingbirds so this was a treat, though it would have been better if they didn't have other birds mixed in... We made a quick stop over at the giraffes and headed out for Balboa Park. We were going to the Museum of Natual History where the BodyWorlds exhibit was set up. It was a fascinating exhibit once you get your mind past the ickiness of it. After that, as you can imagine, we were exhausted and hungry, so we made reservations at some trendy Chinese restaurant conveniently located a few blocks from the stadium... during the 2nd game of the season... needless to say, there was absolutely no parking anywhere near there, so we just gave up and hit the best dessert place ever... Extraordinary Desserts in Hilcrest.

I'd say we covered San Diego.
Have a great weekend!
~Dewdrop