So, we went to Salt Lake City last week to take the kids to Hogle Zoo. While not as big or up to date as San Diego, it is still a nice little zoo. It is also considerably cheaper than the San Diego Zoo. The kids were very excited to see all of the animals, particularly the polar bear. They also enjoyed the bird show, or what portion of the show we got to see. One of the hawks was not cooperating and flew into a tree and would not come down. Due to this uncooperative bird they had to stop the show in order to retrieve the errant bird, because they didn't want him to decide to come down and attack the other birds in the show. The most exciting prospect for Dylan was being able to take pictures of the animals rear ends. He is a 9 year old boy, so do you even have to ask? He wants to amass a collection of animal butt pictures, and he was able to get several of them. Like I said, he is 9. We were able to see the entire zoo in about 4 1/2 hours, which is considerably faster than I expected. Overall we had a really good time enjoying all of the animals together as a family. Hogle Zoo has definitely gotten better since I was there a little over 20 years ago. They still have some improving to do in order to make the animals more comfortable and happy, but they have done a lot of upgrades over the past several years. While we were up north we decided to go to The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. We were quite surprised when we pulled into the parking lot and saw that the aquarium is housed in an old grocery store building, which I came to find out used to be a Smith's grocery store several years ago. Needless to say we found it quite amusing. The aquarium is pretty small, but it is well put together. They kids loved seeing the penguins, otters, sharks and sea turtle. Megan's favorite part turned out to be the area where you can touch the stingrays. She was very hesitant at first and didn't want to touch them, she thought she would get stung, but after a little convincing she touched them. She would have stayed there for hours touching them if we would have let her. They are actually building a new home for the aquarium in Draper. The new building is going to be quite a bit larger than the grocery store it is currently in, so it should be quite a bit better for the animals than it is currently. We spent about 2 hours at the aquarium and had fun seeing all of the different sea creatures on display. It is also fairly inexpensive. If you happen to find yourself up in the Salt Lake area I would recommend checking out Hogle Zoo and The Living Planet Aquarium.
This shark tank is about 14,000 gallons, the new one is going to be over 100,000 gallons!
Megan was enjoying the stingrays after a little encouragement.
Penguins have always been one of favorite animals.
One of Krys's favorites, otters!
One of my favorites, the tigers! They have 4 and all of them were sleeping! Lazy cats!!!
Megan's favorite part of the zoo!
