San Diego, CA Vaca – Day 3: The San Diego Zoo

Is today my birthday? Is it Christmas? It sure feels like it is because today I got to see GIANT PANDAS!!!!!!!! WAT?! Yes, for real, and yes, I will be honest, it was slightly a big reason as to why I wanted to visit San Diego haha, but not the only reason. Jacob told one of his bosses it was the only reason we were going and they just laughed. It all started long ago when my family and I took a trip to Washington D.C. when I was five years old. And on that trip, I saw my first Panda bear. And I was in love. My mom and dad bought me a little stuffed panda bear, that I named Bluebonnet (who knows why, I was five…) and to this day I still have that thing! And no, I don’t sleep with it every night. But I probably used to.

Photo courtesy of Mama Gatza capturing the glorious first viewing moment – Don’t you love my pose? It’s how I watched them today as well. Just kidding there’s no way I could do this right now.

We got to the zoo a little later today after it opened, but walked right on in since I had bought tickets yesterday. They had huge maps and thank goodness, some nice volunteer saw our confused overwhelmed faces and came over to guide us to a good starting place. This zoo is HUGE. Just in case anyone else is visiting, we went to the African trek first because there is less shade on that side of the park and walked up to the Polar Bears and down to the Pandas. On the other side of the zoo, there is much more shade so it is better to be there in the afternoon. Most of this is just pictures of animals and pictures of us looking at animals, so get ready for a fun ride. If you want to skip to the panda pictures I would totally understand. ;0)

So how do you get an almost two year old to wear his sunglasses? You put him outside in the blazing sun and tell him there are big elephants around. He was totally ok with it under only those circumstances.

LLAMAS!

So, as a parent, you spend a lot of time reading books to your kid. We spend part of our day at some point reading books and always read before nap and bedtime. It was so fun today just to see him making connections between animals we have read about and seeing them in person. He is an expert with animal noises too, so that was just fun watching him imitate animals we’ve talked about and seen at the Houston zoo. It never gets old!

Yep, Monster Mutt came with us today. Can’t leave him behind!

Felt kind of bad for these guys today, it was hot!

Rudolph anyone?

They had a really cool air tram that you could take across the park. I really wanted to do this, but we really just ran out of time. We could have squeezed it in at the end of the day but sometimes you have to give your cranky toddler a break and just call it a day haha!

Here it comes… the moment you have been waiting for. Ok, really the moment I had been waiting for…

PANDA CANYON!

I could have stayed here all day!!!

Yes, JoJo, I need lessons on shadowing and focusing my camera! eek!

After the Panda Trek, we rode this cool escalator thing to the Treetop area to eat lunch. It was so handy with a stroller!

After lunch, we walked through some of the monkey exhibits and then walked through some of the cooler shaded areas so little man could (hopefully) fall asleep.

Apparently all he needs is a bag of cheetos and a TV remote. P.S. it was this big guy’s birthday today!

Best friends!

Yes, we were excited. Our child does not do things like this. He just never really has, always wakes up once the car stopped/never transfers from the car to the bed ect., would only fall asleep if he was just dead tired and absolutely had to. Guess we hit that point today. It only last about 40 minutes thought haha but better than nothing!

I mean might have bought something while we were here…

After little man woke up, we took the bus tour around the park. Jackson had been almost more excited about the busses he kept seeing today rather than the animals so we waited until the end of the day to ride. It was a double decker bus and we were so glad we sat on the bottom because it was so hot out!

After the bus ride we headed back to the hotel room. We would have liked to stay a little longer but we were all so tired! Watched a little Doc McStuffins, ate some canteloupe and then went and had dinner at a little Greek place next to our hotel. After dinner, we walked around the back of our hotel so Jackson could run around some more. We met a little dog named Hoover who was so cute! His owner found him at 6 months old, tried to find the owner but no one claimed him so they kept him! He doesn’t shed, some kind of black and white poodle mix, and so friendly! What was also funny was that the owner’s wife’s birthday was the same as our due date! Wish I would have gotten a picture of this little guy!