Oregon Zoo

The Oregon Zoo is a really nice zoo. It's certainly rivals the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. One of the really nice things about this zoo is the fact that it is very wooded. It's beautiful just to walk around. One area, Stellar Cove, was really cool. It was full of caves that you walk through in order to be able to see underwater habitats.

These seals were fun to watch swimming around in their habitat. Josh loved watching them.

Not too far away were the penguins. They had their own little building. Inside were the penguins, some kind of bird that I don't remember, and some turtles. Josh couldn't get enough of following and pointing at the penguins.

Outside the penguin house were these cool sculptures. The kids just had to climb on them, as always.
There's something new at the zoo: dinosaurs. It cost an extra $4 per person for the honor of walking a path with animatronic dinosaurs along the way. I'm glad we went because they were a lot of fun and the kids loved them. Josh didn't show an ounce of fear and just pointed and stared. This particular dinosaur spit at you. If you look closely, you can see the spray hitting the kids. It was a really popular spot with all the kids.

Ok, so I lied just a teensy-weensy bit above. While the first T-Rex didn't scare Josh, this one did. It was HUGE and LOUD. It roared and every time it did Josh jumped. Unfortunately for him, there was also a slide near him that the kids wanted to go down so he had to hear a few roars before we could move on. And move on we did.

After the dinosaurs, we wanted to find the train. On the way, we found this adorable Malaysian Sun Bear. Doesn't he just look adorable there, napping in the sun?

We finally found the train ride and waiting in line. The train loops around parts of the zoo and parts of the Washington Park, a huge park in which the zoo, children's museum, forestry museum, and Japanese garden are all located. Right before we left, another family in our group showed up. Mika wanted to ride with them but they didn't make it on the train so we made very quick plans to meet after their ride returned to the depo. The kids enjoyed the ride and we socialized with yet another family with our group on the ride.

After the ride we, ate our lunch while we waited for our friends. Then we all headed through the Northwest exhibits and the farm exhibit.

In the farm museum, the kids ran and played together. They found this tractor to climb on and we were able to get them to stop just barely long enough to snap this photo. The only one missing is Josh. Don't they look like they are having fun? They are!

After finding our way through the Northwest exhibits, we headed out of the zoo for our next stop: the Portland Children's Museum.

We didn't see everything in the zoo but the kids were getting tired of all the walking. I would definitely visit this zoo again, though. It was a nice one.