Lincoln Park Zoo

Amazingly enough, even though I have lived about 15 minutes outside of Chicago, I had never visited the Lincoln Park Zoo until  August 28th of this year. It's a shame too because the zoo had really nice areas to view the animals. You are able to get much closer to the animals than you can at say the Brookfield Zoo.

The kids and I went with Steve's parents. We almost didn't go because rain was forcasted for most of the day, but it didn't even rain at all while we were there. We ate lunch pretty soon after arriving, but we stopped to look at the lions first.

We stepped into a house right before lunch and saw jaguars and leopards.

There was a place to eat our picnic lunch in the basement of one of the houses. A family left right when we got there, so we had a large room all to ourselves. Alexa asked to use the bathroom, which is strange because she will definitly not ask to do so on her own at home. I'm still having a lot of problems with potty training both of them but, as we will be taking a two week vacation soon, I will start being more regular with putting them on the toilet when I get home.

Anyways, back to the zoo. After lunch, we walked around some and came to an area that had a statue with stone benches surrounding it. The kids spent a good fifteen minutes here just walking along the bench and jumping off. I remember when they were two, and we spent almost a half hour playing sleep. They would pretend to fall asleep on the bench, and then we'd have to act surprised and excited when they would pretend to wake up.

On our way to see other animals, the kids spotted a caurosel and of course had to have a ride. What a rip off though!  They charged $2.75 per person, even for the adults riding along! At least at the Brookfield Zoo, adults ride for free. Oh, well. The kids had a great time.

We made our way over to the children's zoo next. It was strange to call it a children's zoo because it seemed more like a walkway with different animals to see along the way, and not much different from the other parts of the zoo. The kids ran across this echo display which they enjoyed with Granddad.

The best part of the trip was the bear cage. They had at least two bears that we could see behind a glass cage. The bears had a fairly large area to roam with lots of trees and bushes to hide behind, so we couldn't see them at first. The kids sat up close to the glass to watch for the bears to come out. Suddenly, Jared found a worm in the dirt. Excitedly, he held up the worm. At the same time, a group of what I am guessing were kids on a field trip walked by. One boy says, "Hey, look what that boy has!" and then I was bombarded by a herd of kids all crowding around Jared to see the worm.

Meanwhile, the bear came out from behind the tree and walked to within seven or eight feet of the glass. Did the kids care, even after the adults tried over and over to get them to notice the bear right in front of them? No. They were all facinated by the worm. I think it was probably because the worm was something tangible and interactive for them.

Well, after the worm experience we went to the ape house and saw apes, chimpanzees and monkeys before heading home. A really great day, and I hope we are able to come back again soon.