Our First Zoo Trip

Fair warning- zoo picture overload. For once, I wasn't the photographer at an outting.

A while back, we took a quick last minute trip to Virginia to visit my family. I didn't realize that its been more than two years since the Giant had been to my hometown. While visiting family, we decided to bear the 100 degree heat and swing by the Mill Mountain Zoo with Nana and Skipper. This was Cheyanne's first zoo trip. I'm pretty excited that I can write down in her baby book it was my little hometown zoo on top of our mountain.

We braved the crowds of two dozen people and explored the zoo. Roanoke's zoo may not be much to some, but to a little girl that loves animals of any kind and frankly had never experienced non-domesticated animals that up close, she loved it.

This is the Mill Mountain Zoo tiger. For real. 

Here, I was explaining to Cheyanne that the tiger was hot so "Don't touch. Hot." Of course she then had to touch it to prove to herself it was indeed hot. "Ouch."

Skipper and Chey checking out the prairie dogs.

Who's ever seen or for that matter heard of a red panda? Roanoke has one, of all things. To me, it looked more like a big fluffy raccoon. I wish I had a better picture to show you.

If you go to the Mill Mountain Zoo, there is one thing you must do while there. You must ride the train. Making two loops around the zoo lasting about 5-10 minutes, we saw lions and tigers and bears… oh my. Just kidding. We saw a coyote and vultures and a possible cougar-like animal. 

Despite the lack of her smiles in these pictures, she actually loved the choo-choo ride. 

We, of course, waved at Nana and Skipper as we rode by the station for round two.

Come on kid. Give me a smile.

I know she liked the choo-choo because she threw quite the tantrum when we had to get off at the station, saying "Choo choo!" over and over again as we walked away. At least we gave the conductor a good laugh.

Daddy and Chey standing over the choo choo tracks.

"Fine. If I can't ride the choo choo, then I'm taking my new toy train and I'm outta here."

Thanks Nana and Skipper for a our first zoo visit! 

Giving Daddy love.