Arizona Road Trip

Abby and my mom and I took a weekend road trip to Arizona to visit our family there (my uncle and his kids and grandson!) We had a great time, and the weather was perfect! So our big outing was a trip to the zoo! Abby's first time seeing animals in person! We had a great visit and got to meet the newest member of the family, Andrew Sislo (2 months old)!

Sadly Abby ran a high fever Saturday which kept us indoors and quiet, but she's 100% better now, so I'm guessing it was just a fluky virus of sorts. You never know!!

But we had a great visit all the same!!

Chillin' in our sunglasses.......in front of the ostrich den

This was a great experience. These are "Lory birds", and this is an exhibit where you get to feed the birds hands on in this aviary. You walk in and the handlers give you a chunk of apple. You simply hold the apple in your hand and the bird flies to your arm and starts eating it. Very weird, but fun too! These birds only eat the nectar out of the apple, so they leave the skin and pulp behind (they cannot digest solids).

One bird decided to take refuge on my head of all places.....In this photo Abby had no idea there was a bird on my head. It took us a while to get her to look up and see it. Oh, and no, I wasn't worried about bird poop, we were warned that it takes about 15 minutes for the apple nectar to go from beak to butt, so they warn you at 13 minutes to shake off the bird and get out.

Here Abby finally sees the bird on my head......and its his tail so I'm not sure if she knew what was going on.

The giraffe's were my favorite animal of the day. Here is Uncle Kenney holding her towards the giraffe. We got to feed them giraffe pellets by hand, mostly I just dumped the food onto their 18" tongue!! YUCK!!!! These tongues are long, wide and like a whole other appendage in itself. Very freaky....Abby was a little disturbed but took it all in.

The giraffes walked around in a BIG circle out in their yard, then would approach the tower for food by sticking out their long tongue and waiting for you to offer up the goods.

Abby getting an eyeful of giraffe tongue!!

Here are the mommies and babies!! Andrew Sislo (2 mo's old) and mommy Erin!!

We were standing in front of the tiger enclosure.....there was a white tiger and a bengal tiger enclosed together, pacing back and forth anxiously as they watched the lion in the adjacent enclosure! Very active cats!!

I think the ducks were Abby's favorite part of the day. It was a good height for her to stand at, so we bought duck pellets and threw them food for a while. She got a kick out of it, and even started quacking at them once I got her to understand that they were the same ducks we quack about at home!

The petting zoo area.......Abby wasn't keen on the goats and other animals inhabiting the petting zoo, but it was the end of the day, so here's a somewhat happy face with the goats just behind her. One little goat actually had her by the back of her shirt at one point while I was walking her around, so we had to pull him off!!

Oh and the Penguin exhibit (it was a zoo and aquarium so they had fish and reptile exhibits too!) was another favorite because she could stand at the glass wall as the Penguins swam right up to her. It was so funny because they didn't just swim by, they swam to her and would stay there a few seconds before swimming away......and back again. She got a kick out of seeing them so up close.