So-so St. Louis Part II

Wednesday morning we got up and hit the free breakfast at the hotel. It was very tasty. We got dressed and packed up and managed to get out the door a lot earlier than I thought we would. I wanted to get to the zoo as early as possible because the Children's Zoo is free the first hour that the zoo is open. (The actual zoo is free to get into and then they charge for certain exhibits and rides) We got there and had the whole place to ourselves! The reason? It was a nippy 35 degrees and windy! Luckily I had brought our winter jackets and even gloves, but it was still too cold! We went straight to the children's zoo and there was a nice indoor area for the kids to explore. We went there first to warm up.



Blaise wasn't really interested in any of the animals, he just wanted to sit in this car the whole time. They had some cute guinea pigs to pet and hold and he liked that, but the rest of the time he was "driving". Rae was also more interested in the toys and climbing area than the actual animals. Oh well. At least we were warm :) After a while we ventured back outside and walked around the rest of the children's zoo. They had some fun slides and ropes to climb on, but it was just too cold! There was ice on the slides. :(

The kids really wanted to ride the carousel, so we headed in that direction next. We stopped at the penguins. They were so cute! They were getting fed when we there, so that was fun. Rae and the kids went inside the exhibit to see more, but I stayed outside because the smell was too strong for me.



Puffins.



If you look closely on the left you can see one swimming towards Rae. Man, they were so cute!

We headed to the carousel next but it was closed! :( The train was closed too. Major bummer. And by this point my leg was starting to hurt a bunch (I think I pulled something while I was ice skating or when I was playing around in the children's zoo) and the kids were starting to get a little tired and cold and bored. We went to see the "big cats" next and the kids really liked that. Then we stopped to eat our lunch but it was too cold to sit for more than 5 minutes! By this point the kids were really really ticked. We went into the bird exhibit next to warm up again! These are the only other pictures we have at the zoo:



My leg was really really hurting!



Blaise hates to be cold - he was pretty unhappy the whole time.



Rae was probably the happiest of all of us.


We really wanted to see the elephants but decided they were too long of a walk away and the kids wouldn't care anyway. So we stopped by the sea lions and then the gift shop (luckily they had some cool stuff on clearance, so we were actually able to buy the kids a few things) and then we left! Fairly uneventful and disappointing trip to the zoo, but at least it was free! Across the street from the zoo (where we parked, to save $11!) they have all these turtles to climb on. Roy took them to do that while I sat in the car and planned our route to Costco. I think they had more fun on the turtles than they did in the zoo! And Roy took a ton of pictures of them!



"Feeding" the turtles.







I'll finish this up with Part III tomorrow.