Surfergeeks

Well, we made it home from the Toronto Zoo just before 10pm tonight. We left the zoo right around 5pm. It’s a two hour drive. You do the math…

Somewhere right around Kitchener-ish (I think) traffic slows to a COMPLETE crawl stop. I can see some flashing lights off in the distance. W00t! Death and carnage. As we get up there, we see a car sideways against the concrete barrier. No death. Not much carnage. Boo! So by the time we get through that it’s almost time for Alex to eat so we head into the Mickey D’s @ Kitchener to feed him and top off our tummies as well. Whilst there we overhear some others saying the 401 is closed further west, but were unable to discern any details as to exactly where or why.

After filling up, we head back out and are making great progress and then WHAM – full stop. This was just past the Ingersoll/CAMI turnoff. We SLOWLY move forward and FINALLY get routed off the highway at Putnam, then back on at Hwy 73. Looking in the rear view mirror I could see a LOT of orange flashing lights and possibly a few red/white flashers but couldn’t be sure. Going to watch the news at eleven to see if I can find out what was going on.

So, the zoo…

It rained.

And rained.

And rained some more.

The original plan was for Jen, Mike, Bri, and Serena to join us, along with Jen’s friend Erica and her two kids, Ben & Ella. Unfortunately Erica had to back out earlier this week. As today approached Jen & I kept watch on the weather network to see how the weather was shaping up. First look was 30% chance of scattered showers. Then 80% chance of showers. Then 80% chance of thunderstorms. Ugh. Well, this morning it was still sitting at 80% thunderstorms but we decided to go anyway. So we may get a little wet. Big deal. Jen called and had to cancel as well as Serena came down ill and was running a fever. We’re still going damn it!

We got there just after 11am and made our way into the zoo. We picked up a rain poncho for the kid that was only about fifteen times too big for him. (as in we could of stuffed 15 of him into the thing) We also snagged a wheelchair for my Mom to ride around in. The walking would have been too much for her and the pushing gave me a good workout! We saw tons of things we didn’t see last year and had a terrific time. The only really disappointing part of the day was that the kids’ zoo was pretty much closed due to the rain. Most of the animals were hangin’ out in their shelters so they didn’t get wet. Not that I blame them.

We took a shit load of pictures too. I’ll try to get those downloaded off the camera and captioned and uploaded to the site tomorrow.

Alex was still a little too small to appreciate what he was seeing. Some of the things caught his attention because they moved. Others, like this giant snapping turtle, didn’t really seem to do much for him since it didn’t really move. He’s sorta like a T-Rex in that way – if it doesn’t move, he doesn’t see it.

Would the zoo have been better if it was warm and sunny? Absolutely! Did we have a great time anyway? Most Definitely!