San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Two little lemurs

 

There was a funny interactive show called Robert the Zebra, and I think that was the kids' favorite thing.

The tram is my favorite part of this park. You drive around and see scenes straight out of Wild Kingdom, like this...

This is the second rule of our family, after "listen to mom and dad".

We saw some California condors. They are huge. The Galapagos tortoises were big and impressive too.

 

An eland

Flamingo on her nest

All good zoos have a rhino statue to climb on.

The grounds and the plants were almost as enjoyable as the exotic animals.

Todd went with Pete and  Otto Coronado, the resident pup, on a dusk trip to the beach. You can see the iconic Hotel del Coronado behind TB. The mom and kids went to sleep.

San Diego Zoo

The weather was beautiful. The kids were adorable and I was high-energy. We spent seven hours riding the tour bus, the skyfari tram, eating treats, and looking at all the animals and plants. We only saw half of everything.

Ikey borrowed Jovie's hat.

Jovie and a hippo.

The kids poked their head out of the ice by a leopard seal. Brave.

With a baby polar bear statue.

 

FLASHBACK!

Road trip to Mesquite and Coronado

We took off on Sunday mid-morning so we could have a leisurely drive to Mesquite to start our Coronado vacation. TB always drives, and I never do.

It's a pretty drive when you can sleep through the boring parts like I do! TB's grandfather's construction company built much of the Virgin River Gorge, so we always oooh and aahhh appropriately.

It was hot. We left hot weather in SLC and found hot weather on the whole drive to Mesquite.

 

The kids are pretty good on long drives. They can last for a long time before we have to break out a movies on the iPad.

 We checked into the Casablanca and headed for the pool to cool off.

 We had dinner at Peggy Sue's and the boys loved it!

 

We had breakfast at the Casablanca and it was a great deal. The kids were pretty distracted by all the lights and bells from the slot machines. Our car couldn't take the heat the next day, so we were sidelined in Las Vegas for a few hours while it had to get checked out. Luckily, we made it to Pete and Dan's place on Monday afternoon as we planned and we had a great dinner with Pete at Miguel's.

 

Timpanogos Cave

I loaded the kids straight from bed in jammies into the car at 6 am. We stopped to fill up the car with gas and pick up cousin Sierra. We checked in to the Visitor Center, strapped on "monkey backpacks" (those are leashes for kids!) and headed up the hike at 7:15. It's a paved trail that is 1.5 miles one way with 1,100 foot elevation gain and really steep drop offs.

Sierra and I traded kids every few minutes and we marched right up to the cave entrance. It took about an hour and we didn't have to carry the kids at all.

A lot of people were hiking for exercise, but I didn't see any other 3 or 4 year olds on the trail. We got a lot of comments about their good hiking skills and their backpacks.

The cave was CHILLY. It's 45 degrees all year and I didn't have a jacket so I was a little cold. It was 100 degrees outside, so we were glad that we started hiking early. Isaac was the "door opener and light switcher" on the tour of the cave.

We had a picnic and ice cream cones at the snack bar. Ikey was really tired. He said he took a nap on this bench. He didn't stop talking the whole time we were there, so I'm not sure he actually fell asleep.

Alpine Loop, Cascade Springs, Sundance

I've felt sick every time I've been a passenger on the Alpine Loop trail, so I did a little experiment today to see if I like it better when I'm the pilot. After ballet class, we headed south to Utah County and up American Fork Canyon.

We stopped here to see if we could miraculously get tickets for a cave tour right away. They said we could hike together, but one of us would have to do an earlier tour. I volunteered to send the kids in with the tour guide and no mom, but they didn't take me up on that, so we couldn't get in to the cave today. One of us promptly threw a crying fit on the floor of the visitor center and  one of us did not yell at the other one. We signed up for tickets for a very early hike on an upcoming very hot day, so check back for details on that.

 
 Next stop was Cascade Springs, which is a series of loopy trails and boardwalks around a pretty little spring. 

Jovie said "I want to watch the brown trout all day."

 

 

Video of Jovie and audio of Ikey. It seems like there is cursing, but there's a good explanation for that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxNxOB20ZCY&feature=youtu.be

 

A guy at this stop was excited to show us a snake slithering through the grass. He chose the wrong family to share with because we do not want to see snakes. Jovie drenched herself with a water spigot just before this spot, but since it was hot, she dried out quickly.

The Alpine Loop is pretty! Come back in fall for the changing colors.

 

 We stopped for a late lunch at The Foundry Grill at Sundance. It was good and we used our best late-afternoon-on-the-first-day-of-summer-outdoor-restaurant manners.

 

It was a nice way to spend a day that was too hot at our house.

Dinosaur Train at Heber Valley Railroad

AJ, Jovie, Tommy and Isaac at the station.

 

There were some wacky dinosaur characters at the station and on the train. When the kids saw the orange one, they yelled, "Alien" and ran away. The Preeces were planning to travel with us, but they only made it as far as the station before Miles was too sick and tired to get on the train. Don't these kids know it's summer and illnesses are not on the schedule?

The conductor hardly has time for photos.

 

The crowd was very into making weird faces.

Me: Do you want to get some dinner after this?

Jovie: Yes, let's go to a very trainy restaurant that Isaac will like. How trainy is Dairy Keen?

 

We haven't been to Dairy Keen before, but Grandma Rainey told us about it when we were driving through Heber last week on our way to Wallsburg. Jovie remembered that I guess, so we went to Dairy Keen and it is very trainy and Isaac liked it.