Denver Zoo

The day after the museum, Kenny's family joined us with Grandpa Brent at the Denver Zoo. We haven't been to this zoo in 5 years and were excited to go again.

We saw lions . . .

and turtles . . .

and rhinos . . .

and macaws . . .

but Leif (and probably the other kids) were most excited to see the elephants! The Toronto zoo is bigger than the Denver zoo and has many interesting animals, but they don't have elephants, a sore point with Leif every time we went.

Of course we had to go to the elephant show. We got there nice and early to get the best seats and got to watch the elephants playing together before the show started.

The other animal of the most interest to the kids was the otters. There were baby otters and they were so adorable to watch!

My favorite animal is the Indian Rhino (he looks like he's wearing armor)

and Austin's favorite animal is the hippo.

We got to see a demonstration of the spotted hyena, which wasn't nearly as creepy as I always thought they were.

We saw the giraffes . . .

the sea lions . . .

and the tiger (I was disappointed that they only have one tiger- they used to have several)

My three middle kids went in with Stella, Malory, Fletcher and Arland to pet and feed the sting rays, but since we had already done this in Quebec, Asher and Natalie stayed with us and waited for them. Natalie was happy to go with Abbey to get an ice cream cone, but she couldn't eat it nearly as fast as it was melting.

At the end of the trip we went in the tropical building and saw lots of snakes, lizards, spiders, bats and the like. But the most interesting things in there were the capybara and the sloth.

We also got an annual family pass to the zoo, so we'll be back again to see the animals. We are hoping to get there as early as possible when the animals are more active.