Seattle Vacation - Day 4 (Photos)

I was able to get the camera to talk to the laptop tonight so I'm able to get the photos uploaded. I really dislike that this camera is so touchy. It's that way with my laptop, too. I think it must be some kind of short in the cord. I need to probably see if I can find another cord, but it's probably going to be a nightmare. There seems to be so many different cords out there. Maybe Radio Shack would be a place to try the next time I'm in Manhattan.

Anyway, here are the pictures from Monday. We started out the day at the Seattle Science Center. We didn't know what to expect, and I don't think Bruce was really looking forward to it, but I do think that he ended up being okay with it. We spent longer than I thought we would there.

There were many different exhibits, and one of them was the tropical butterfly exhibit. It was really pretty. I would like to have been able to just sit and enjoy them, but alas a five-year old was ready to move on. Plus, the keepers of the butterflies were very anxious about not sitting on one or stepping on one or soemthing because they land anywhere, including the floor. I assume these fish could be classified under the name of koi. They were very pretty. These are naked mole rat or something like that. There were tubes and tubes of them; kinda like a gerbil kingdom or something. They are one of those things that are so ugly they are kinda cute....kinda... This was the kids exploration area. The area inside the walled area was for young children, and they had a measuring device that said you could be no taller than "this"...Allison fell right in the middle of the measuring sign. There were a lot of really little kids in there, so she was probably too big for it, but there weren't *that* many in there and since it was just her and she was pretty well behaved, I didn't think it would be a big deal, as she did want to go in and play.Right next to it were these life sized checkers and chess games. Allison and her dad played checkers. It would be really easy to build one of these checkers games. The pieces were just those construction pylons painted red and white. Yes, that chair really is oversized.

After leaving the Seattle Science Center, we drove to find the Woodland Park Zoo. Of course, at this point in our journey, because it had been so nice, and now we wanted to be outside, it decided to sprinkle on us. We were troopers, and it just bordered on being kinda miserable.

The pictures are actually in order from last to first in the order we visited, but I didn't think it would really matter.

Penguins are one of my favorite. Their exhibit habitat must be fairly new, and it looked really nice, but it was actually kind of hard to see them by virtue that you are on the exact same level as their exhibit. I think the plexiglass aquarium is supposed to let you have a good view of them swimming, but you wait and wait until they actually swim by where you are standing. It's really hard to see them once they are out of the water.

There were two new baby snow leopards born at the zoo in May 2009. It would have been neat to see them, but at this point in the afternoon they must've been napping with momma, so we didn't get to actually see them. Instead, Allison and I had our picture taken in the snow leopard cut out. :) Kangaroo...

Brown bear.......

This was outside the Komodo Dragon exhibit. Periodically throughout the zoo they had really nice sculptures of the animals on exhibit. Allison enjoyed climbing on them. like the monkey statue too...

The orangutans had just had their "nourishment" feeding, which was some type of jelly or something stuck in these tubes. They were then given some type of stick with which they would stir around in the tubes and get the jelly out and lick off the stick. It was fun watching them. Some of the different monkeys...I don't remember what they specifically were....

Baby elephant statue...

Tapir. Gorgeous lions Didn't get a real good vantage point of the giraffes at this time of day.

There were at least three hippos...they just kept coming out of the water.

We left the zoo when it closed at 4:00, so of course we were going to get into the 'rush hour' traffic (whenever that even ends or begin!). Bruce had seen on the map that there was a Marysville, Washington, so that's where he wanted to stay overnight and say we had been there. I wish I could've gotten a better photo of the traffic. I tried. We were on Highway/Interstate 5, and there were between 5 and 6 lanes going one way, so like 10 to 12 going both ways. Traffic everywhere!