Chicago Trip - Lincoln Park Zoo

So I figure I'll break up the posts for our Chicago trip... since I have a lot to say and a lot of pictures to share. So keep an eye out for more posts over the next few days. I'll start with our trip to the Lincoln Park Zoo on Sunday. After Carson woke from his morning nap on Sunday, we got packed up and took a walk up to the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a long walk (just shy of 2 miles from our hotel), but it was a nice one, though still a little chilly at first (and rainy before we left the hotel). The day warmed up quickly, though, and we had an awesome time at the zoo! We still can't believe that such a nice zoo is FREE... yep, free admission for everyone! Another bonus... they have an organic cafe!

We were a little worried that most of the animals would be inside or something due to the rain earlier that morning and the cooler temps, but we were able to see just about every animal with an exhibit (the exception was the polar bears). We were very excited for Carson to see a real lion... lions are probably his second favorite animal (second to dogs) and he loves to roar like a lion. So we headed to see the lions fairly early on in our adventure to make sure Carson was fully alert. The zoo had two females and one male lion, all of which seemed pretty relaxed when we first walked into the cat house. After a few minutes of being inside, Carson roared at the lions... within seconds one of the females started roaring! Then the male and other female got in on the action, and the leopard across the way, too. It was quite loud with all the roaring for a good 3-4 minutes. It was soooo cool! Carson jumped at first and put his head down on Kevin's shoulder for a couple seconds, but after that he was just staring and smiling, totally loving it! That was definitely the highlight of our trip! And now, Carson is roaring even more often than he was before! :)

Carson also really enjoyed watching the gorillas and monkeys in the primate house. We had a nice show from a family of four monkeys, swinging around on ropes and playing. But the gorillas seemed to be what Carson enjoyed most. They had a family of six gorillas and the 23-year old dominant male was huge! They were pretty active and were sitting up against or very close to the glass, so we were able to get some good views. Carson just stared and pointed at them... like he was just in awe or something.

We were able to see lots of other animals, too, but those were definitely Carson's favorites... though he did miss the giraffe because he was taking a snooze at that point... he likes giraffes, too. We all really loved the zoo and will definitely make a trip back the next time we're in Chicago! After our trip to the zoo, we took a little walk around Lincoln Park... and decided that we think we'd enjoy living there... but don't worry, we're not moving anytime soon! Even though we'd love to, there's no way we could sell our house in this market. For now, we'll just have to live with visiting Chicago. :) Anyway, I'll be uploading pictures from Saturday and Sunday soon, so keep an eye out for them in our Shutterfly albums (link to the right).