Day 2: Salt Lake City

What a day. I don’t think we could have crammed one more thing into the day if we tried! After a restful night we repacked the car and headed toward Salt Lake to start our day at the Hogle Zoo. We were very surprised at the admission price for the Zoo- it was very cheap! Adults were only $8 and the kids were $6. And if we thought that was a good price at first, we thought it was an awesome price after making our way through the many different exhibits.

Some of the highlights for the kids were ...

Rydman’s favorite activity a the Zoo was the Bird show. The birds flew right over the heads of those of us in the audience. His favorite bird was the Bald Eagle.
Emerie loved everything about the Zoo. She couldn’t decide which thing was her very favorite! But I think one of her highlights was the carousel, where she got to ride on a Hippo!
Quincy really enjoyed seeing the meerkat. (We were not allowed to leave the Zoo until we found these little critters!
Cutler liked all the animals including the elephant, the eagle, he tiger, and the white alligator. He also loved the little train that he got to ride around the Zoo.
Lincoln liked when he got to pet the Big Horn Sheep through the fence. (We are not sure that was allowed exactly but no signs were posted stating not to!)
Mabry loved the carousel. She rode on an ostrich and laughed every time it took her up.

It was a nice day, a little on the hotter side. But for us Vegans it was just another day in paradise. It was a good thing that Rachel remembered to pack the water backpacks. They come in very handy when you are walking around and people want to sell you water bottles that cost over $2 a bottle!!
The Ghost of the Bayou exhibit was pretty cool. It housed a white alligator, but it is not an albino alligator. It is something called a leucistic alligator. It is a much more rare phenomenon than the albinos. An albino alligator has no pigment in their whole bodies (all the tissue is white), which is why their eyes are pink (you see the blood cells). A leucistic alligator has color, everything about it is normal except its skin is white and its eyes are blue! I guess there are only 10 of these type of alligators known to exist in the world, and they all came form the same nest!! So they are all related, and the Zoo Keeper said they were all brothers. So maybe it is just a boy thing, who knows!
There were Elephants and Giraffes. Penguins and Porcupines. What was really nice were most of the animals were active or at least easily visible. So the kids did not have much problem locating them. (We are not too sure how much Lincoln and Mabry saw but they were entertained nonetheless.) The only thing that this zoo did not have was a Hippo. So Emerie was a little disappointed about that- as Hippo’s are her favorite animal ever! Hopefully her ride on the carousel made up a little for the lack of the real animal.
We also met a one eyed hawk named Artemis. (It has both eyes but is blind in its left eye, which means that it can not fly other than in a circle.) The bird was found at the base of a tree when it was young and was brought to the Zoo. It has been living there ever since.

After we had our fill of the Zoo we headed over to the “This is the Place” Pioneer Park. We did not go inside the pioneer village, but we did see the monument and learn a little more about the different groups that made Salt Lake City a reality.

From there we made our way down to Temple Square. The kids had never been there before so we took them around to the different highlights including the Conference Center. They really thought it was cool to see where conference is broadcasted from. They especially liked the roof! (Cutler had to touch all the different water features!) We also went into the Visitor Center and saw the Christ statue. I think the kids were awed by that whole experience.

And although this sounds like a very long day already, we still had one more stop. My friend Haley’s family lives in Farmington and it just happened that her brother got married on Thursday, Which meant that she was in Utah too! And since she has never seen Lincoln in real life I knew we had. to go see her and her fam. So we drove out to Farmington and spent some time with the Wiggins family. It was great to see them all. And Haley’s mom made us feel right at home by letting us take over her home for a few hours. She even fed the kids and sent us off with some yummy treats to share.

My Mom and sister were good sports and took all the kids back into Salt Lake but let me stay behind with Haley. We have not seen each other in about a year, so it was nice to have a little extra time to catch up and chat.