Mommy’s Plate

Our Day Trip to the Dallas Zoo

Well, it was another beautiful weekend in Dallas and we were not going to waste it!

We surprised the kids, well, Mina, with a trip to the zoo.  Benji is always just along for the ride.

I was very excited to use my new Happy Hallow membership card.  I learned about this through DFW Area Moms and procrastinated signing up long enough for them to offer a 2 years for the price of 1 year membership.  I think this is going to be a great deal for the Team Phipps excursions!

Family Picture, Elephants Representing Mommy

We arrived around 1 oclock and headed first toward the African exhibits by the Sting Ray exhibit and penguins as we were looking forward to riding the monorail.  Unfortunately, the entire section distal to the Sting Ray exhibit was closed!! 

Mina checking out the penguinos

Mina...not very tall

The kids also did not get to truly enjoy or experience touching the stingrays (which costs 2.50 per person and I am unsure how much longer they will have this exhibit) because their arms were too short.  Ogre and I were able to feel them and they were slimy.  Mina did get to touch one of the spiny ones that have pinchers because one of the zoo ladies pulled it out for her and taught us how to identify the male ones by their pinchers.  That was pretty cool.

We stopped and perused by a few of the animals before heading back to Zoo North.  Mina started to complain that she was hungry.  We headed up to the Food Court and got some lunch for the kids.  I was a little annoyed because there weren’t very many open tables as they were setting up for some private function.  I don’t think that’s very fair for the daily zoo patrons, but we were able to find a table so I can’t complain too much.

Next, we headed to the “Children’s Zoo.”  I was surprised to see so many kids walking and ROLLING through the “river” that ran through the play area (it’s just water that runs over a designated area about 3 inches deep).  One kids was totally soaked.  Our kids would not be participating in that.  There was a little play area and a place where the kids could ride ponies.  More interesting to our geeky little family was the aviary.  We went in to see the birds and Mina was lucky enough to have one of the birds on her arm courtesy of a kind zookeeper, she thought it was “itchy” and later told me it was her favorite part of the zoo!

We decided that this area was not so exciting and headed off to Zoo North.  Being somewhat strapped for time, we asked Mina what animals she would prefer to see and she decided on the giraffes, tigers, and elephants.  We managed to see all of those animals -the tiger was the hardest to catch a glimpse of.  The giraffes and elephant were in the “cage” part (I don’t know what the real word is for that part of their habitat -they are free to go back and forth, but it’s not the part that looks more natural).

Ogre reminded that THE elephant we saw was Jenny, of the contraversial where should we move Jenny to?  After all that discussion, she’s going to be staying in Dallas.

Another fun area was the reptile and amphibian exhibit.  Benji learned what a snake (sneh) was and the sound it makes “Sssss.”  He (and Mina) loved this.  Ogre loved pointing out to me the Rat Snake, which we’ve found on our back porch before and the one on our porch was probably 5 feet long!  And they emit a skunk like smell!  UGH!!!  There is also a tropical aviary in this exhibit, again, a favorite for our family.

We saw more animals and passed a beautiful bird exhibit with the Harpey Eagle (Mina learned about these on Go Diego Go), a Condor (my favorite animal from the zoo) and the Bald Eagle (I wonder if this was Ogre’s favorite, he’s a patriotic kind of guy).

Mina’s favorite exhibit was the Bug Exhibit because she saw bees making honey.  She and her Papa had a great time talking about all the bugs.  Benji was rather bored and we went outside to walk around.

About this time, we decided it was time to go since we needed to eat dinner and get home with enough time for me to get to work.  It was great and we are excited for the next time that we come, when we will be more prepared so Mina can ride the Carousel (requires cash to buy tokens -you can actually use a credit card in the children’s zoo to buy tokens, but we opted not to), we can see the rhinoceroses and cheetahs that we had to skip this time around, and hopefully ride the monorail!!

Details for the Dallas Zoo:

• $5 for parking
• $8.75 for adults
• $5.75 for aged 3-11
• $5.00 65+
• Open 9-5 daily (til 4 in the winter)

If you have one of the Happy Hallow memberships, admission is free!  So you just have to pay for parking, greasy food, expensive animal shaped bottled sugar drinks, souvenirs they’ll play with only today, extra exhibits that are worthless to your short armed children, and carousel rides!  Woo-hoo!