Vacation - Day 2

Our second day of vacation was so much fun! This was our first full day. We woke up at Myles' brother's house, and as they were leaving for church, we were leaving for the Tulsa Zoo! We would have loved to visit their church again (it's been years), but we needed to get on the road as soon as we could, so we had to go ahead and get to the zoo.

While there we had a personal tour guide! How exciting it was! We had been in contact with someone who worked at the zoo. I'll call him John. :) We had not met him IRL before, but we knew he was very knowledgeable and very nice and were really looking forward to visiting with him!

I called him as soon as we arrived and he asked us to meet him at the Aldabra Tortoise exhibit. These are some HUGE tortoises! They are so fascinating too! John was there tending to them while waiting for us to arrive.

There were not many visitors hanging around. Most of them just walked on by. John opened the gate to let us in the building and yard, and then people began to stop and take notice. I'm sure they were wondering how they could get in too!

At one point, there was a man with a young girl who hopped over the fence to take a close-up picture. When John saw them, he asked them to leave and told them that "these are special VIP guests". Hee hee.....I have to admit, that was very ego-building. LOL! I felt so special! :) We don't get to do things like this very often.....or never, so it was really cool. :)

We had a great time watching these tortoises walk around and eat, but the thing that I personally thought was so fascinating was that they actually have feeling in their shells! I had no idea! When you touch their shells, they stretch out their legs and stand straight up. It was so cool! So we sort of petted them for a while, and they seemed to really enjoy it. We scratched their necks a little too, but we had to stay away from their heads. I guess they don't like it if you get too close to their faces.

I tried to get a picture of one of them eating some leaves, but my camera wouldn't click at the right time. I got him with his mouth closed, but it's still a cool picture. :)








Next we walked to a pond that had a boardwalk and gazebo out to the middle of it. At first glance, to most people, it is just a nice relaxing place to sit and enjoy the nice weather, but John opened up our eyes to all we had been missing. Obviously most everyone else misses it all too, because so many people just walked right on by as we were exploring.

What did he show us? He pointed out a couple of snakes hidden in the grass, several spiders and other insects making their homes in hidden corners and baby turtles camouflaged on logs. The seemingly quiet and relaxing environment was so full of life and excitement, and all we had to do was take notice!

Jacob was dying to hold some kind of animal, so John actually reached in the water and pulled out a Red-eared Slider! Now, Jacob couldn't actually hold one, but he was very interested in and fascinated by it. And we were touched to see someone who actually cared about kids and wanted them to learn about animals. John pulled out a turtle just for Jacob to have a closer look! That was awesome! :)

Next we went to see the elephants on our way to John's office while he went to clock out for the day. (What a great guy.....ready to go home, not on the clock anymore, but still willing to show us around some more!)

The Tulsa Zoo has a couple of the elephants from the OKC Zoo while they build a new elephant habitat. I think they will have them for a couple more years or so. They had several elephants here, I'm not really sure how many, but they are always fun to watch. And the Tulsa Zoo is also a "Living Museum", so they had a little building that was the elephant museum. I wasn't crazy over the museums just because we do not believe in evolution, but they did have some nice displays and things for the kids to interact with.


So then we met John at his office, which happened to be back behind the aquariums where the reptiles are on display! He had several various kinds of reptiles in the office that he showed us, and he was actually teaching the kids about differences in the species of different turtles, snakes, etc. They really enjoyed seeing these fascinating creatures up close!




Finally, Jacob got his wish. They got to hold a constrictor that was at least 5' long! This was very exciting to them. It made me a little nervous, I must admit, but I enjoyed seeing it up close myself. John was expert at handling it, of course, so we knew all would be fine. Jayla's favorite part was when the snake wrapped around her body. Now that is where I was a little nervous! She is so little that it wouldn't take much for it to crush her! LOL! I love this picture of her with the snake though!

Finally, John had to leave for the day and go see his family, so we walked around the rest of the zoo. We specifically wanted to see things that the OKC Zoo does not have, like the penguins and polar bears. They really weren't all that exciting. I expected them to be in an ice/snow environment, but they were laying around in the green grass. Oh, well, we still enjoyed seeing them!





Looking in at the polar bear (I think) and I caught a moment of play. :)

We finally ended the day with a few hours of drive time into Missouri and a motel stay in Springfield at a Best Western. The drive time was actually a lot of fun. We had stopped at the Oklahoma Visitor's Center and found Car Bingo, so we played that for a while and had many laughs together from it. We also sang songs, read books, watched movies.....I think we were pretty well prepared for a long drive, and the kids did amazingly well!

Thank you, "John", for making most of our fun on day 2 a possibility! We will always remember you, and hopefully we can come and visit you again soon! :)