Zoo Day

Oh my gosh!!!! The Gelsenkirchen Zoo is by and large one of the most awesome zoos I've ever been too, except of course Toledo Zoo! Currently, the Gelsenkirchen Zoo has to themed areas, Africa and Alaska. It is about 1.4 hours from my house and we spent 5 hours there, with two little kids even! I think the fact that we could spend such a large amount of time there says a lot about the quality. In the Alaska exhibit, pictured below, all the signs are in English, just like you'd see in Alaska. You walk through a mine with Sam the holographic miner, who speaks German, telling you about mining in Alaska. There were polar bears, moose, reindeer, skunks (brown which I've never seen before), porcupines, beavers and 3 beautiful lynz. Oh yeah, and my favorite, the otters!! They were sunning themselves and looked like my cats lazing around.
This is the Alaska entrance called the Tlingit gate. I think Tlingit is the native language of Alaska.
These are the cute little otters, the one on the left sleeps like my Sammy and the one on the right sleeps like Angel. I can't believe how cute they were and that they were right out where we could take pictures!

Then we headed to Africa where we saw lions, and lemurs and chimps, oh my! The Africa exhibit had extras like an African hut exhibit and a huge playground complete with and African hut swing that kids climbed right up inside to swing around.
The meerkats were lying in a huddle under a heat lamp. They were so cute and I couldn't help but think of everyone back home and the Meerkat Manor craze while I was in Korea. I thought it was funny the one on the right that's laying on it's back being smothered by the others!
I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes! I petted a lemur!!!! No kidding, they had lemurs jumping around on a littl island and if the lemur came down on a certain area you could pet it. I was a bit apprehenive because they have pretty sharp teeth and don't always look all that cuddly, but I will definitely mark this down as a way cool experience.


These are the friends I went with, Erin and the Bruces (including the two little cuties Ava and Cruz). The kids were great and Cruz's dad Doug is going to be so sad he missed this since he's TDY to the U.S. doing absolutely nothing on the beach!