Como Park Zoo

In honor of Mr.'s day off, we made a spontaneous trip to the Como Park Zoo today. Como Lake with it's adjacent park, zoo, and conservatory, is located in Saint Paul. We've admired the neighborhood, park, and lake since we arrived in the Twin Cities, but hadn't had the opportunity to visit the zoo until today. We were quite impressed with the variety of animals and the large, beautiful habitats. Miss had a wonderful time seeing the animals, and imitating them. This is our first trip to a zoo in over a year, and she has definitely grown in her enthusiasm for and fascination with the animals. She was also slightly frightened by some of them, because the great exhibits allowed for such close-up viewing. We were just one sheet of plexiglas away from a *GIANT* gorilla, and a *HUGE* male lion. Miss did not feel that the plexiglas was sufficient protection, and decided to keep her distance.

One of the highlights of our visit was a ride on a beautiful, restored carousel that was originally built for the Minnesota State Fair in 1919. It had beautiful, hand-carved wooden horses, and a big Wurlitzer organ on board.

Best of all, the entire day was free! The zoo is always free, and the carousel was having a "free day." The Peanut household loves anything free, and we are very excited that Como Park will be approximately 15 minutes from our new house. We envision many trips to visit the monkeys, giraffes, seals and polar bears in our future.

Miss expresses her excitement over seeing the bison.

Master and Mr. wait patiently for their turn on the carousel.

Miss and Mommy bask in the glow of the carousel ride.