Today we embarked on a long 3 hour journey deep into the Portland Zoo. There were oooh’s. There were aaah’s, and most of all there were pictures. It was a pretty intense day. Started out with the usual of me sleeping waaay too long in the morning and making my lovely future husband do all the Amelia work. I’m am so not a morning person. But eventually my lazy ass made it out of bed in time to hear the beautiful chorus that is the banging of our child’s padded butt against her crib walls. Ah yes, the baby’s still awake symphony. One look at Dustin confirmed that our bundle of joy had yet to take her morning nap so we decided to whisk her out of bed and give her a morningish bath. Thinking this would calm her down enough to allow sleep to do the rest, we set her back down and listened again to the butt bouncing rhythm. Eventually, she made it to the puffy clouds of sleep and we glanced at the clock. Hmm our specific arrival plan was quickly dwindling down to a probable leave the house at an hour later plan instead.
After allowing the munchkin as much sleep as we could, we packed up the van and headed over to get our friends Zach and Pam. The gang was assembled! With an excited yelp and some help from the oldie’s station we set off to the Portland Zoo. Roughly 25 minutes and some shop talk later we arrived. I would like to say that the entrance was an impressive archway decorated with wildly swinging monkeys and giant condors ready to swoop down and collect your eyes, but alas it was merely some pretty greenery and a ticket person. Bah! Where’s the creativity these days?! But I digress. We entered after some one sided bantering with the ticket lady by Pam, apparently when asked how we arrived “by teleporter” is not an acceptable response… who knew? But we were inside and that was the important bit.
Immediately, we broke out the Zoo map and plotted our course…. oh dear god we have become parents.. *face palm*. We decided to check out the Pacific Northwest Exhibit first. Yes, we are in the Pacific Northwest… and yes there’s an exhibit to the local critters around us. Must be the “just in case you missed it, it’s new to you!” special. And you know what, it was pretty awesome. There were black bears, cougars, lynxes, and all kinds of other creatures I didn’t realize lived around us. There were even polar bears.. now I think that was a stretch, but I guess you can rope them in there with the Pacific part of the journey. We popped out after a fun journey though a log (see pictures) and ended up in the Primates Exhibit. By this time we’d reached a few areas where we could let Amelia run around outside the stroller and she was loving the freedom. Though I think all the different animals caught her off guard as while she was happy enough to point at them from a safe distance, shuffling closer was only an option when either myself or Dustin took her up to the glass. She did pretty well though all things considered. Dustin had her in his arms again and we made tracks to the African Wildlife Exhibit.
As we walked through a giant log into the vast Serengeti plains we were greeted by the mediocre drum playing of a sickly tribesman. Ok turns out as we rounded the corner that it was some woman attempting to bang on de drums all day. But at least it was semi authentic. We started our expedition here and by this time had started to encounter the random baby grumps that occurs when a certain little someone is tired. We put her in the stroller and hoped she’d take a short nap. Such naivety we have! Because of course there was too much to see and too much to point at! We toured the zebra’s, the elephants, the hippo’s, the rhino’s, the hyena’s, and so much more and as we came out from an enclosed exhibit we were greeted by drums that summoned the great rain gods themselves! But once again we were misled. In the drum hut stood not a great African tribal leader as we had thought, but no.. two hipsters one with a paper cup pressed between his lips and covering his mouth and nose, while leaving his hands free to create their musical melodies, banging out a pretty cool beat. With that as our background we headed over to the giraffes and out to the last exhibit, the Pacific Shores.
Honestly, by this time we had a cranky Amelia and all of our feet were killing us. The collective centipede was slowing down, resting on random benches and hanging out at exhibits longer than necessary. But we summoned up the last vestiges of energy and trolled on. I think there were tigers somewhere, but around this time practically all of the animals had the right idea. It was nap time. Whether sheltered under the precious shade of strategically placed rocks or tucked away into the zoo built sanctuaries the rest of the creatures were decidedly absent. And they had every right to be after all they are wild creatures despite their caged environment. They aren’t circus creatures here to perform for our every whim and fancy. Even though occasionally, I caught myself saying “look over here damn you!” What? Deal with it.
And thus concluded our romp through the Portland Zoo. It was fun and it was 3 hours of awesome sights and completed with great company. Thanks Zach and Pam for coming out and hanging with us. Certainly had quite a few fun pictures from the whole trip.
Til next time!