Our first family adventure to the Oregon Zoo was on Thursday evening. It was a nice warm day, so it made for a tolerable evening. Since we had such a short time to visit we set off with a mission because there were a couple of animals we wanted to be able to see! It is a really nice place to visit, and we only whetted our whistle, we can't wait to go back and enjoy the day with Jadon when he gets older. The nice thing about it was that it wasn't the concrete jungle's that I remembered visiting as a child, but true to Portland form you set off on a hike and feel like you are really out in nature. At least the Pacific Northwest exhibit had that nice back roads feel. That is where we set off first. Will and I had learned that they have a bald eagle and I really wanted to
see my first live eagle! And she is beautiful. She was brought to the Oregon Zoo because she was hurt as a young eagle and has never gained back enough strength to be released in the wild. We were able to see the Birds of Prey show and she flew very low right over our heads and her wing span is SEVEN FEET! Wow! Now I need to top it off by seeing one in the wild! On our search for the bald eagle, we were surprised by some black bears! And they are beautiful creatures as well. We tried to get a picture of them with Jadon for Nina, but the bears wouldn't cooperate. It was at the end of their day and I think they were tired. This exhibit also had mountain lions, but we didn't spend too much time watching them. Pretty much all the all the animals that Will
and I want to avoid on our camping trips.
Next we headed off to the monkey cages. Will had been told that monkeys get excited and 'oodles' over babies, and he wanted to see if they would react that way with Jadon. Unfortunately, we didn't get that kind of reaction out of the chimpanzee's or orangutans, but I was wearing Jadon in the wrap, and I didn't think of taking him out of the wrap. So, no
response out of them could be because they didn't even notice Jadon. Our night was topped off by watching the Birds of Prey show that I mentioned earlier. We were able to sit and watch a hawk, eagle, owl and vulture fly inches over our head. So close that the vulture's leather strap knocked me in the head! It was really amazing to see.