San Diego Zoo

'Since we're going to be so close, could we take an extra day and go to the San Diego Zoo?' Knowing how crazy grandson Ryker is over pandas, and that there are only two zoos in the US with pandas, and it WAS only 100 miles from Disneyland.......'Why, of course!'

We were up bright and early to be at the gate BEFORE it opened!

A playful pygmy hippo

The gator boy, Ranger

Orangutans are daughter Casey's favorite. Here we witness what the volunteer says is the first father/daughter interaction she has seen!

More monkeys

Red panda

My best panda shot!

Ryker is in heaven!

Snow leopard

Reminds me of a 'Whack-a-Mole' arcade game.

Papa thinks so too

Milo loves the polar bears

This was a fun series of photos in my library, where it started with a few of our group stepping onto a BIG scale to compare how many of us it would take to equal an average polar bear (answer: 3) We ended with EVERYONE piling on and Grammie taking a down shot, but only managing to see about half of us.

We all took the tram across the zoo, taking 4 cars for the whole group.

We were told we were very lucky to see a koala awake and feeding. They are active for only 2 hours a day.

The rest of the time they SLEEP!

Pretending to be koalas

Madalyn's got it down!

Maddie with her favorite.

Well that's it for our shot of California sunshine! Next day it's back to the stormy Northwest.