Albuquerque Biological Park

Today three kids and I played "hooky" from school and went to three cool parks in one - the zoo, aquarium, and botanical gardens. We got a little later start (arrived at the zoo a little before 11 am) than I would recommend since it is a LOT of walking, but we had a great time and really the park's closing hours came right about the time our energy level hit low and we were ready to be done anyways.

Here's the description of the day in pictures...

Flamingoes were the first exhibit we saw. Kids said, "Lots of Featherstones"

Next we saw the reptile house...so many, many venomous creatures!!

They had two really big komodo dragons.

This guy was a West African Gaboon Viper, scientific
name Bitis rhinoceros. (That made me giggle for some reason.)
Capable of inflicting a fatal bite, but is fairly
docile and has the longest fangs of any snake, which
can grow up to 2 inches!

 A few different varieties of cobra, this pic
 doesn't do it justice.

There were two really big crocodiles laying in sunspots
in two separate enclosures.

My three favorite bird pictures were these below, but my our favorite bird we saw was a cockatoo that said, "Hiii!"when we walked up to it and whistled at us.

Northern Helmeted Curassow lives in Venezuela and Colombia on the Tropical forest floor. 

Wood duck casually swam by us looking for handouts.

We watched the peacock for quite a while until
 he startled us all with his sudden call.
We did get to see one fully fanning his tail plumage,
 but I didn't get to take his picture.

We probably jumped 6 inches when
he let out his call.

Our absolute favorite for the whole day was the polar bears. The zoo had two in one enclosure. We got there and watched one playing with his big plastic block. He kept banging it around and finally lifted it up and pushed it over a rock wall and it crashed down below out of our line of sight. Next thing we knew, the bear had scooted over and grabbed a piece of the hard, heavy plastic and jumped into his cooling pool and played with it very vigorously. He even threw it up in the air and caught it. He put it on his head. He dove under the water with it. He kept throwing it up, seemingly, to the watching crowd and finally one time it got stuck on the ledge above. The bear sat down and looked so dejected, until a lady reached through the wire and tapped the edge and the piece splashed down into the pool and the bear splashed right in after it. Both bears were so beautiful, healthy-looking, active and completely visible and close to us and it was really hard to tear ourselves away from them.

Yawn.

He was sleeping on his back like the biggest house cat in the world.

 

Baby giraffe was out, just born on Saturday (2 days old!) We really wanted
to get a better look, but she didn't move from where she was and we hypothesized
she was either "hiding" or maybe she was stuck. ;o)

Baby white rhino, Chopper, and his companion adult, Bertha. A big wind gust hit right when
we were observing here and lasted a couple of minutes and their dirt
blew all over so we moved along rather quickly.

Saddle billed stork from Africa, so cool and unique

Mosaic throne

Red River Hog - isn't it "cute"?

The primates were our second favorite of the day.

Spencer made me laugh so hard. He saw the sign about not
feeding the animals. He said, "It says they are on a special diet.
I don't think it's working." Brynna says, "Yeah, he outgrew his fur."

We'll call this one a little grumpy.

This one was watching everyone watch her. She kept on tapping
on the glass with her finger. Very playful,
she kept putting the twig thing on her head
like a crown and around her neck.

We came around the corner from the viewing window and
here she was. It felt like very close.

Flamingo FIGHT on our way out of the zoo.

We washed our hands and drank our water and ate a little popcorn snack and hopped in the Yukon and drove the approximately 8 blocks in heavy traffic and construction to get to the aquarium. It didn't take long to work our way through and Skylar had been dying to get there all day and then was pretty disappointed that they didn't have an octopus. He said, "Well, Mom, sea creatures are my favorite animals. Not just fish!" But they did have some pretty cool tanks.

This one seemed to have a deformed upper jaw?? Kept coming right by the window
looking like he was smiling for the camera.

We exited the aquarium and got our required "smashed pennies" for the kids souvenir books. Next, we headed to the Botanical Gardens area. It contains several different styles of gardens. The first area we saw was the Child's Garden where you have to pass by a big dragon and then you're shrunk to the size of a bug.

What's that!? A giant caterpillar?! Oh no!

Cottonwood fluff was flying EVERYWHERE! Just
look at that stuff!

Giant pine cone

Slide through a hollow log...made us think of Enchanted Forest.

Cute hatchlings.

Ceremonial Gardens with a HUGE wisteria arbor. The vines looked so cool twisted around pillars.

Next there were two indoor exhibits. One was a Spring Flower show featuring hydrangeas. The other was a desert garden.

The misting moisture and fans in the Spring flower
exhibit felt so good.

The desert garden room was beautiful, but stifling hot. There were some huge cacti in there though. Most memorable was a saguaro that was probably 10 feet tall.

Lastly, loved the Japanese style garden. 

See, I was there too. Gorgeous white flower behind me and waterfall across the pond.

We finished with a speedy tour of the farm something or other garden area as the park was closing. I just liked the way this picture turned out...

We were so tired and really hungry when we left the gardens (we'd really only had a granola bar and a handful of popcorn since breakfast and we probably walked about 4 miles today), so we ate out yet again. We'd never been to a Sweet Tomatoes before and we decided to give it a try. It was really good. Everything seemed very fresh and yummy.