Minnesota Zoo

Stephen doesn’t get many holidays off.  Instead his company gives him 4 or 5 (depending on the year) “floating” holidays.  So most Federal holidays are not holidays.  However, New Years Day is one that they do recognize and this year since it landed on a Saturday the “observed” holiday was Monday January 3rd.  So what were we going to do since Stephen got to be home with us and all school age children were back in school?  Go to the zoo, of course!  There weren’t any crowds at all, which was wonderful.  I’m sure it would have been PACKED if we’d tried going the week before.  We also thought it’d be a fun place to try out our new 50mm lens we got for Christmas.

We started on the “Tropics Trail” (because it’s warm in there).  The girls are wearing their hats that I made them for Christmas.

  

The Tropics Trail ends with a Coral Reef.  We let Clara get out and look at the fish.  The entire time Samantha kept asking us where the whale was (there’s a picture of a whale by the IMAX at the entrance of the zoo).  But they both loved looking at the giant fish tank.

   

We decided that rather than going through the “Minnesota Trail” (it has a bunch of native Minnesotan animals) we’d go to the “Discovery Bay” where there are more fish and more specifically: the dolphins, one of which is a baby.  Samantha spent a good hour just watching the dolphins.  I attempted to get some shots, but the tank is super blue… I went over and took some other aquarium pictures that came out much better.

  

  

Since Samantha like the dolphins so much, we decided to go up on top.  They used to do dolphin shows but they haven’t had them for a few years because of pregnant dolphins, babies and a lot of unlucky happenings for the babies.  But up top we could see the dolphins swimming around, playing with toys, and jumping.  Samantha loved going up and down the steps and made friends.  Clara took the time to take a much needed nap.  Stephen had the camera and had a good time playing with it (f/1.4 does some crazy stuff).  But one of the best shots of the day was when he managed to catch the baby dolphin jumping… and he wasn’t even looking through the camera.