Tag Archives: zoo

3 free stops on the way to Minnesota

Two of these stops were great!

And one was not so great but most of that was timing I think.

The bonus was all of them were free and great ways for kids to get some energy out!

The first stop was in Independence, KS at the Riverside Park and Ralph Mitchell Zoo.

They don’t have any big animals but we saw monkeys, birds, raccoons, donkeys, and more!

And the best part was it is free!

It was a great way for the kids to walk around.

And since there were animals to look at none of mine complained about the walk 😉

They also had a fun play area with statues and a castle! The boys liked the castle!

Second stop that was great and free was the Dorothy Pecaut Nature Center in Sioux City, IA. The kids loved a little camera in a cave that was an animal on the exhibit!

We stumbled upon this fun play place!

The kids loved this playground!

I liked the short walking path that would give everyone a chance to stretch their legs.

We stopped overnight which is not something we typically do so we got to stop more on the way up.

The next day we stopped at McCrory Gardens in Brookings, SD.

It looks like a beautiful botanical gardens and arboretum but there was a wedding going on so we missed a lot of it.

Still a nice place to walk around though.

No clue what Little Bit is doing here…

But those two always make me laugh.

Do you have some cheap or free must stop places while traveling?

Dallas Zoo

Before we headed home from Dallas, we stopped at the Dallas Zoo.

It ended up being a great stop!

We have a local zoo pass that gives us a discount at some other zoo’s and we got 50% off!

That is a big deal when you are paying for 7 entrance fees. The zoo is set up so that you can do loops.

It was nice because we did not have to backtrack much at all and got to see everything in a shorter amount of time! So many of the exhibits were breathtakingly beautiful.

I felt like I was in a different place.

I definitely did not feel like I was still in Texas! It is always nice to wear out your kids before a long drive also… Those hands!!! So cute!

Even though I still felt like my kids needed to run laps by the end of our drive, I am glad that we started our trip home with a visit to this zoo!

I think they were a little tired for at least the first 30mins of driving 😉

 

Here is a video of our time in Dallas!

Last Fall at the Zoo with Friends ~Tulsa Zoo

The closer we got to our adoption date last year, the more I did not like editing photos that I could not share.

So a lot of photos were forgotten.

Including these photos I took when on a trip to the zoo with friends last fall.

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Toddlers interacting is so funny.

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Oh good, she likes us.

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As a mom and photographer, I always try to get pics of my mom friends with their kids.

We don’t get in enough shots.

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 I am thankful for flexible friends during this journey.