Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

Friday morning we took a little day trip down to Colorado Springs to visit the very popular Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It was expensive ($14.25 per adult, $7.25 per kid under 12) and it was a haul (about an hour from our house, whereas the closer but lamer Denver Zoo is only a 20 minute drive) but it was AMAZING! If you ever come to visit us here in Denver be prepared for us to drag you down to the zoo.

On our way:

Tommy picked out his loudest swim shirt and matching snow boots for our (68 degree) day out.

Our lil' Einstein: Tommy is fully capable of unscrewing the cap and drinking from the bottle like a normal human child but finds gnawing a tiny hole through the bottom and slurping out the contents much more satisfying.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo is set into the foothills above Colorado Springs. A view of the Springs from the Zoo:

I don't know what this is, but it appears to be the ruins of some fort on the hillside above the zoo. (To be examined the next time we are in the Springs....)

The Zoo! After entering the gates the first stop is the giraffe exhibit. Lots and lots of giraffes--my hands-down favorite zoo animal.

The walkways around the giraffe exhibit are elevated so when the animals come close, you are literally face to face with them.

See what I mean? There is a zoo worker selling giraffe crackers ($1 for a stack of three) so we spent quite a while feeding the giraffes. They have incredibly long, black tongues. They were sweet and friendly (and didn't stink whatsoever, unlike the monkey house which actually caused my eyes to water.)

After we left the giraffes, we headed out onto the main path and found we were just behind a group of deer taking a short cut through the zoo. Here is the back end of the last one:

Near our lunch stop ($21 worth of hot dogs and french fries, plus two pumpernickel/rye rolls that Tommy picked up--sadly mistaking them for poofy brownies) is this cool climbing area.

Two pleasant-if-incapable-of-taking-a-hint children made sure they were front and center during my attempts to take a picture of Calvin, Josie, Jon and Tommy. With all the superfluous children in this picture you can't even tell Sid is not in the shot. He chose to hang out with a friend all day and totally missed out. Maybe next time he won't be so quick to say the zoo is for babies. What am I saying? Of course he will! (Don't tell anyone I told you this, but he really did wish he had come with us.)

More climby things to climb on.

Chasing after the free range chickens in the "Big Backyard" area of the zoo. Big Backyard also had a tree house, petting zoo,

oversized lawn furniture,

and a nest of dinosaur eggs just right for taking pictures.

This is what I get for asking my intellectually challenged children to share an egg for a "twinny" picture.

Grizzly bear

Napping Cougars. We didn't zoom in for this shot. So many of the exhibits were close up like this one. Thank goodness for industrial grade Plexiglas.

Ha! This porcupine up a tree was totally hilarious.

Figuring you aren't interested in this porcupine's lady parts, I have taking the liberty of censoring this photo. We saw lots of animal privates at this zoo (probably the only negative to such close-up exhibits). For the most part I don't think the kids really caught on, but Josie did at one point mention that she was tired of looking at the p e n i s of a particular Chinese Crested bear.

The wildest things we saw all day--including the warthogs and the screaming lemurs:

Unplanned anatomy lessons aside, this zoo is just really cool. The setting, the variety of animals (I know I only mentioned a few, but there were SO MANY) plus the inventive enclosures all made our trip down to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo really really fun. We are already planning a trip next May. Come with us!