San Diego Zoo

We took a trip to San Diego for Halloween and Hudson's first birthday.  Oh the trees and the perfect weather, San Diego is always such a nice get away.  They have an amazing zoo there and the entire month of October, kids admission is free!  We hadn't been since Avery was tiny. We started the day with a ride on the double decker bus tour around the whole zoo.  We all wanted to sit up top and we got a seat right in the very front with a great view.  

 Since that zoo is humongous it was nice to take the bus around and see things that we wouldn't have gotten to see by trying to walk it all.  It was perfect for seeing some of the bigger animals like the elephants and the giraffes.

 After the tour we got our maps and headed over to show Hudson the monkeys since they are always doing something entertaining.  One of them sat of the ground and played with branches trying to make something out of them....the other one put on quite an acrobatic show for us swinging on her ropes and climbing and hanging from them.

 The kids loved it.  I am not usually a huge fan of the monkeys but this particular one was quite the entertainer.  It kept Hudson's attention.

 We walked around the rest of the zoo and saw tons of animals.  The weather was seriously amazing, we could not have picked a better day.  Since it was Halloween day the zoo was not crowded at all and we had plenty of room and time to really stop at each exhibit and watch the animals.

 We rode the sky rail that runs across the park.  Another fun way to check out the whole view of the zoo....

 I think everyone's favorite part was at the very end.  We had gone to see the panda exhibit at the beginning of the day and the pandas were all asleep and not doing anything.  We were told to come back right before the zoo closed and that they would be awake then.  So right before closing time we literally ran across the zoo to the panda exhibit and made it just in time to sit and watch the panda's playing.  The mother and her fifteen month old cub.  They had asked everyone to be very quiet and as we all sat and watched them together, it was as if we were watching them in the wild.  So neat to watch the baby bat at his mom's ears playfully and the way the mother would patiently lean her head back and stare at him.They were so cute together.  It was neat to watch.  We closed the park down and then headed to change everyone into their costumes for trick or treating.