Lions, and Tigers, and Trains, OH MY!

About the first week of November we decided to have some fun with one of our Saturday mornings. We climbed on the train and headed up to Albuquerque to spend the morning at the zoo. Erik was so excited to get to ride a city bus from the train station to the zoo, in fact that may have been his favorite part of the entire day. 

It was really fun to take Erik to the zoo. This is the zoo that I grew up going to, and I have to say I've never been to another zoo that I like quite as much as this one (not that I've been to a ton, but still...). We had to start by dropping a few pennies down the wishing well. It's still just as cool to watch the coins rolling round and round on their way down as it was when I was a kid. 

 Erik was most excited to see the elephants and the lions, so we headed for the "Africa" side of the park. Turns out that actually the elephants are on the very far edge of the Africa area, and the lions aren't even there at all. Erik was mildly interested in the monkeys and tigers and zebras and things of that nature that we were walking past, but he was mostly just a man on a mission. He wanted those elephants!

Leaving the monkey house, Erik realized that Dad had fallen behind a bit and ran back to get him. 

Watching some really pretty parrots and other exotic birds.

 If you've been reading our blog for a while, you may know that we can't pass a statue without having a bit of fun with it. Like this time, and this time, and this time (this last one is the best).

Finally, we got to the elephants. Erik was SO excited! The zoo had a brand new baby elephant (she turned one month old the day we were there), who was on display for the first time the weekend we were there. We were at the zoo early enough in the day that the place was pretty empty, but I think just about everyone who was there were all gathered around the female elephant enclosure. We got a glimpse of the baby, but it wasn't worth fighting the crowds, so we decided to go give the other elephants some attention since I'm sure they were feeling left out.

This guy was putting on a great show playing in the water. Erik was fascinated!

We did eventually make our way around to the big cat area, and saw the lions, but the darn things were just laying around sleeping and Erik was incredibly UNimpressed by them. I'm not even sure he believed us when we told him that what he was looking at was a lion.

We ended the trip by feeding the ducks and the koi in the pond for a while, and then headed back to the bus stop so we could catch our train home. 

This was such a fun trip. It all worked out perfectly, with the train getting us there right as the zoo opened, and giving us just enough time to have some fun before eating a picnic lunch on the train and getting home just in time for Erik's nap. It was fun to go back to a place with so many fun memories. Ethan and I were both surprised at how much smaller it all seemed to us now that we're "grown up". It's still the best zoo I've been to, and we're excited to take Erik back to see the rest of the animals that we missed this time around. We'll probably have to wait until Spring though, since so many of the animals hide away inside during the winter.