Ever since the days of Joan Embery appearing on the Johnny Carson show, I had always wanted to visit the San Diego Zoo.  Over the years, I've had a couple of opportunities to spend an afternoon there when a business trip finished up early.  Jody has never been to the San Diego Zoo, so we both got to see the entire park for the first time together.  It really is THE best zoo.  The park is beautiful in itself, and the grounds and landscape are impeccable.  The animals are clean and look very healthy.  And the strangest thing is that there is very little smell. 
     We arrived at about 9:30, shortly after the zoo opened, and the parking lot was beginning to fill up already .  We did what we always do, and check right up front to see if there is any motorcycle parking, and sure enough, there were a number of motorcycle spots right near the entrance.  Having a motorcycle is great!  We already had the tickets from yesterday, so we just walked right in.  The weather was supposed to be nice - nice, this is San Diego, it will be 78 degrees and sunny all day. 
    We started with the flamingos at the entrance and worked our way over to the reptile house to start.  The plan was to start at the lower left corner of the map and work our way clockwise through the zoo.  We saw reptiles, lizards, snakes, turtles.  All amazing, and we took lots of pictures.We avoided the children's zoo, and worked our way through Discovery Cove to the Monkey Trail.  It was early, and the crowds were not too bad.   We waited until Monday on purpose to avoid the weekend crowds.   Children really love a zoo, the kids that were there were so excited to see all the animals.  San Diego pays special attention to try to get each animals habitat as close to natural as they can .
     There were double-decker guided bus tours around the zoo, but we had all day, and were determined just to walk everywhere we wanted to go.  The Monkey Trail was fun, as monkeys always are.  there were several exotic species that we weren't used to seeing, but there were also some of the more traditional chimpanzees and baboons.  They also had great apes, most notably the silver back gorilla and the orangutan.  The orangutan also had a young baby about a year and a half old.  As I was taking pictures of the adult female orangutan, she saw me with the camera, stopped what she was doing with her baby, and came right over to the glass and looked right at me.  The keeper said that she tends to like men with facial hair, and that for some reason she went right to me.  I took as many pictures as I could, but there was something about the sunlight and the reflection on the glass, that I couldn't get a good picture of her looking directly at me.  It was a little startling, and maybe even a little unnerving.
     We also made it over to the tiger area, and something was upsetting one of the tigers .  She was staring through the fence at something out of our line of sight, and when she gave up, she wandered down towards up growling up a storm.  She was really loud in her complaints!    There was also a huge multi-level aviary in the middle of this section of the zoo.  We were able to see many different exotic types of birds.  By having a multi-level walkway in the aviary, you were able to walk around near the top of the aviary where the birds tend to hang out.  At the far end of this part of the zoo, were the hippos.  They had a huge 150,000 gallon pool set up so the hippos could hang out in the water or on the land depending on what they wanted.  In between these animals were many others that I couldn't begin to remember, some that I had never seen before.
      By this time, it was getting after noon so we took a break and had a snack.  We had gone through about half of the zoo, and we were on pace to finish all the exhibits by dinner.  After our snack, we took a close look at the map, figured out the couple of exhibits we missed, and headed over to the pandas .
     The pandas are still the most popular animals in the zoo, and the only place where there is an actual line to see them.  It took about 30 minutes from the panda entrance until we got to see the pandas, but there were other animals along way to see including some beautiful snow leopards.  The pandas themselves were beautiful also, the younger one was born at the zoo in 2012, and loved just hanging around in the tree so everyone could photograph him. 
     After the pandas, we headed over to the large birds of prey like eagles, and condors.  They really are magnificent birds, much larger than I had expected.  Then it was off to the zebras and gazelles, and some other mountain animals that I'd never seen before.  Finally in the far corner were the polar bears, along with some arctic  birds and reindeer.  There was a huge pool for the polar bears to swim in if they wanted, but mostly they just wanted to sleep.  One of the polar bears got up though, and wandered around just in time for me to get some good pictures . 
     We walked past some more big cats, the mountain lion  was hiding, and the African lions were visible, but asleep.  As we got to the jaguars though, there was a young one wandering around in the cage.  After a few minutes, the mom came out, and the two of them chased each other around roughing it up a little in between.  Beyond the jaguars there is a huge area dedicated to the elephants.  Evidently there is some pretty significant daily care necessary for each elephant, and they have separate cages for each when it is time for care.  Some were getting this done, and a few others were just wandering the area.  They really are something to see,
     Beyond the elephants are a few other animals, and a huge cage especially for a couple of California condors.  They really are huge birds!  Beyond that is a large area under construction for a new section called Africa Rocks scheduled to be open in 2017.  The last sections we had to see were the Outback that contained animals from Australia.  There was a huge display of koala bears, but mostly they just sleep in trees all day .  But they are very cute.  There were also kangaroos, Tasmanian devils, and meerkats.  The meerkats look something like the prairie dogs we had seen elsewhere before, only cuter.  There was also an area called the urban jungle where a number of animals are kept for specialized tours.
     By this time, it was getting to about 3:30 and we had seen all of the animals in the zoo.  We went searching in the zoo store for t-shirts, but no good ones.  Our ticket came with a free ride on the aerial tram, so we decided to take the tram over the zoo to where it ends by the polar bears, and check out some of the gift shops on the way back to the entrance.  It turned out the zoo store sold every t-shirt that was available at any of the gift shops we looked at.  So by the end, Jody got a snow leopard shirt and I got nothing.  We left the zoo at about 4:00 with over 16,000 steps and the end of a great day.
     While we were at the zoo, I called over to the motorcycle shop and verified that me new tires had come in and I could get them installed tomorrow morning .  By 5:00 we were ready for dinner, and remembered seeing a Benihana last night in our travels.  We headed over there for dinner, but the girl at the desk seemed bewildered that we would have the nerve to walk into her restaurant without a reservation.  It was like we were the first people in the history of the universe to try.  So we left and headed over to PF Changs instead.  Dinner was delicious.  Tomorrow I will head over to the motorcycle dealer to be there when it opens at 9:00.  Jody will hang out at the hotel.  Hopefully it won't take too long so we can check out the remaining museums at Balboa park in the afternoon.

16.3 miles today
12,989.0 miles total

0.0 gallons today
313.769 gallons total