Back from The City

Every so often, I need a quick reminder about why I detest The City. It doesn't take long - a couple of days, maybe - and I'm pining away for our "small town" again. (Which is funny, because our town isn't really all that small.)

We went to the zoo and the museum. It was educational and interesting, as it always is.

Cora insisted that her father carry her pretty much the entire time, despite the perfectly good wagon we brought along. Never will he convince me that he hasn't spoiled her.

The polar bears look miserable at the zoo. 80-degree weather on the Colorado plains doesn't seem like an appropriate polar bear habitat.

Hippos are cute little tubs of lard... until you see one relieve himself. It's messy and it's disgusting and I will never see hippos the same way again. (I know you were desperate to hear that, so I wanted to make sure I told you. You're welcome.)

Walking around in an enormous bird cage filled with pretty birds that people spend all day feeding will inevitably lead to someone getting pooped on. Just so ya know.

The museum had a new exhibit about the body. It involved some hands-on science experiments in a real 'lab'. I'm glad Daddy was there to field this one and I think he enjoyed it as much as his young lab partner.

There was an exhibit (that I failed to photograph) called The Fate of a Granola Bar. It shows in a little jar what a granola bar looks like after you chew it, after it goes through the stomach and is digested and mixed with acids and stuff, all the way through the large intestine and then out... well, you know what happens eventually. It was fascinating - but how did they get little jars of half-digested granola bar? The whole body exhibit was full of interesting and slightly disgusting facts about our human bodies. Neat stuff.

So anyway, yeah, we're home. It was good to go, good to get back. That'll likely be the last trip until next spring so I'm thankful we got away.

I'm not quite so thankful that it decided to freeze while we were gone. I'll pout and lament about the mutilated, blackened garden tomorrow.

I just re-read my post and realized in one way or another, I mentioned poop three times in one post. Awesome.