Dickerson Park Zoo

A few months ago, the hubby had a week of training in Springfield, MO. All of the training was on the computer, so why he had to go all the way to Missouri for it I still do not quite comprehend. That really is not the point of this post though.

Since I am staying at home with Claire we decided to tag along for the ride. I "Googled" some fun things to do while we were there and found a really long list of fun activities for Claire and I. In fact I posted about our trip after we returned home (Springfield, MO).

 

 One of the fun things Claire and I did was go to the Dickerson Park Zoo. It is a smaller zoo, but it is so neat. It has a lot of opportunities for animal contact for the littles.

Jared is kind of an animal lover (which is one reason we ended up with two dogs and two cats--I might have been the other reason) and he was so sad that he had to work while we enjoyed the zoo. It was so sad to see him pout over not getting to go to the zoo that I promised him we would return some weekend so that he could see it with Claire too.

Thus our Saturday adventure to Springfield and the Dickerson Park Zoo. The zoo is really more fun in the morning, so we got up REALLY early and made it all the way to Springfield in time for the zoo opening. In fact they were just opening the gates when we pulled up and parked.

Claire got to see a hippopotamus (she loves to say "happo") and lots of snakes, frogs, and turtles. She saw a deer, she fed the giraffes, and watched the elephants get a bath. She fed some goats and even a donkey; although the donkey did mistake some of Claire's fingers for a tasty treat--which was a pretty scary parent moment--but she lived to feed again (although we avoided the donkey from that point forward).

 There was a bald eagle, and a red fox, some really lazy lions, cheetahs and tigers. (Why are all the big cats so lazy?). We saw a couple of black bears chasing each other and bug-tussling (as my mother would say). We also saw some otters, wolves, and other assorted animals.

My all-time favorite thing about the Dickerson Park Zoo is the giraffe deck. They sell these wafers and the giraffes all come over, stick out their extremely long tongues, and take the wafers right out of your hands. Claire thought this was pretty great and so did her daddy.

I think Jared really enjoyed watching the bears. And of course we made a pit-stop at the playground so Claire could go down the slide about twenty times. Thank goodness there were no swings, or we would have been there for another hour.

All in all it was a really great day. I don't know how many times we would be willing to spend more of a day driving than actually being at our destination, but I am still glad we kept our promise to daddy and let him take Claire to the zoo.