Saturday, June 5, 2021- Cleveland Zoo

      We're calling this our second adventure.  The first was our trip to Gettysburg over Easter.  We're anxious for the school year to end so we can start making more day trips and take advantage of the fact that COVID restrictions are loosening.  

     For this trip, we went to Cleveland, a three-hour drive that took Abby into her fourth state for her life-list- Ohio.  We got started early, and ended up arriving at the zoo shortly before 11:00.

     We did what we had done before with Anna. After we saw the elephants and some flamingos near the front gate, we got on the tram which took us up to the "Primate, Cats, and Aquatics" building which is on a hill high above the rest of the zoo.  We explored that building a little bit, though Abby didn't like the part that was darkened for the nocturnal animals.  When we were in the dark, she started saying "No, no, no, no, no," which is a word that she doesn't use very much.

     We had a lunch at the cafe near there and then worked our way down the wooden pathway to the bottom of the hill.  That took us by the "Australian Adventure."  We had been looking forward to riding the train through the kangaroos and wallabies that we remembered from before.  It didn't seem as much fun as it did years ago, and it seemed too hot to do the "walk-about."  We had seen about half of the zoo and decided it was time to visit the gift shop, maybe stop at the Rainforest exhibit, and make our way out.

     At first, Abby's favorite animal at the zoo was the "fusa" (fossa) from Madagascar, and she was cooing when she saw it.  It was Emma's favorite too.  That was among the first animals we saw.  Much later we were sitting across from an elephant who had been standing pretty still, throwing dust on herself with her trunk.  When she started to walk away, Abby chased after her waving, so we think that was probably her favorite.  That's appropriate, since her room at home has so many elephants in it.   The elephants she saw today were the first real elephants she has seen.  Scott and Julie's favorite was the mama orangutan who was showing off her little baby to the picture-taking crowd.

     It ended up being quite hot today, in the 90s, we think.  By shortly after 2:00, we decided that we had seen enough of the zoo for today at least.  We were all dragging in the heat and Abby was looking a little peaked.  We had only seen about half of the zoo and about half of the rainforest, and Scott thinks this was an awful lot like the time when we came here when Anna was little and we did the same thing.  We made our way to the hotel to cool down and maybe let the girls nap along the way.

     As our early dinner time arrived, we went to a place called the Winking Lizard which was right below our hotel.  It turns out to be a chain in the area that specializes in fun kinds of burgers, pizza, and bar-type food.  It has a pretty amazing beer list, though Scott didn't have any this time.  

     We then made our way to see Aunt Joyce, about a half an hour away from our hotel.  On our way, we drove by their old place in North Olmsted.  We couldn't get a good look at it though because someone was working on their car in the drive way.  We went from there to where Aunt Joyce lives now about two miles away.  Scott's cousin Laurie was there too, and we spent about an hour and a half talking with them.  Of course, it was the first time we have seen either of them since Uncle Gene passed away.  We had bought some new Bluey toys for Abby for the trip and opened them for her while we were there so she would have something to play with.  She spent much of her time there taking the four dog characters from person to person, leaving a few of them with one and taking the others to the next.  She was cute and played very nicely.   About 8:00 we said good bye to them and went back to our hotel to try to settle in for the night.