A Day at the Zoo

Last night the weather guys were predicting a good chance that we would have rain today. In the morning when it was supposed to be raining, we looked out and the ground was dry and it was overcast. A look at the weather radar on the computer indicated the rain has gone past us and over to Phoenix by early morning. Looked like the day would be good for the zoo so off we went. The zoo is next door to Balboa Park so no problem finding it. By the time we got there it was clearing up and we even left our coats in the car. The day turned out perfect. Around 68 to 70 and sunny all day. That is the weather San Diego is so famous for.
The zoo is very big and complex to navigate because it is located on a very hilly and tree covered area. They have maps of course but they are not to scale and it takes a little work to get where you want. They even have at least 2 stretches of moving walkway to assist climbing up some steep hills. There is a tour bus that can be taken to any one of their 5 stop points. We did ride that for one trip. The ride we took that I was not excited about was the overhead tram. Any ride that hangs like that one usually does not get my approval. Well it was free so I had to try it. We survived. We got there about 9 am and stayed until after 5. I do not think we covered everything, but saw most of the major areas. Walked several miles in doing it. We are both showing a little color (red) from the all the sun we were exposed to over the past days here and in Scottsdale.
I have attached a few sample pictures below. They were quite excited about a baby Panda bear that they have. We sorta saw it. It was up in a heavily leaf covered tree so could only see enough to tell there was something there. A peak later in the day and he was down in a hammock like bed with just a little fur showing.

This is not the baby or mother of the baby. It is eating bamboo. When we came back in the late pm it was still feasting on bamboo.

This tiger was asleep nearly out of sight when we first got there. A scheduled talk and feed by his keeper brought him out for pictures.

These are included for my sister's parakeets to see.