D.C. Vacation-3rd Day

This was the day of the big Zoo trip. We were so excited to be seeing the Pandas and I had heard the zoo is really awesome. The weather was overcast and very cool...if we were in Texas...ALL the animals would be hanging out and enjoying it...but apparently not the D.C. animals. Hardly any were out in their displays...they must like it warm inside their dens. The ones that were out were acting pretty lazy too. We got excited as we saw the Panda was out...but we were on an upper level walkway and by the time we got to the lower level by the window of the Panda enclosure...it had gone way to the back behind some bushes/trees and we couldn't even see it. Sucks. We went around the zoo and decided to try again later. Once again they were not out in the enclosure...but this time when we went inside their Panda information/viewing house...they were in their pens (with nice big glass windows) eating some bamboo. Only one was really visible though...the mama bear (They have three, a mama, papa and baby). The lion was probably the most active creature here. He had a keg for a playtoy and he was batting it around like he was a playful kitten. It was fun to watch. Another interesting point to this zoo is the free ranging monkeys (see sign picture below)...I didn't get good pictures of them...but there were about 5 or 6 that we could see up in the trees. They also have a rope system where the orangutans can swing from one enclosure in the zoo all the way across to another one. CRAZY...I was sad we didn't see any in motion...but just the thought of an Orangutan swinging over my head was exciting. There was an information board about it that said they won't come down to the ground because they are good swingers and they also have a low voltage frequency on the towers they use to hang the ropes...so they won't climb down. Interesting! Here are some of my better pictures.

do what?

The playful lion.
Sissy shared her lollypop with David...he liked!
Syd and mommy by the sea lions

Like most zoo's they had infomation boards for kids to check out. Sydney looked at almost all that we saw.
pygmy hippo

regular hippo
finally, the panda!