Bay Area Trip: Part 2
I’ll continue our story of our weekend in the Bay Area. This one is shorter, I promise.
We woke on Sunday at Blue and Headra’s new apartment and enjoyed a relaxing morning. We ate some leftover Indian food from the night before; the kids noshed on the cereal and soy milk we brought with us. (We Wilsons always travel with breakfast!) Then we said our goodbyes and fervent thank yous to our gracious hosts and packed into our car to head to our destination: The Oakland Zoo.
Objective: See real, live elephants.
Objective: Visit with Danny, Ian’s ex-step brother, whom we don’t get to see very often.
The Oakland Zoo is really quite lovely. The animals have big, luxurious enclosures, which you might not see so well in my photos. The bigger animals were plains animals like elephants, zebras, and giraffes and their enclosures had a lot of dirt. Other creatures enjoyed trees for swinging in, grass, places to lounge and hide. Those were harder to capture with my Canon; I didn’t have my zoom with me. The whole zoo is hilly and beautifully landscaped, with flowers everywhere.
We rode a ski lift-like sky tram over several animal enclosures, including the lions’ and the tigers’ areas. There’s nothing quite like dangling one’s feet 30 feet over giant carnivores. It was cool to see them from that perspective because there was no fencing or anything to obscure the view. Asher and I rode on a lift together and I nervously kept my arm around him the whole time.
After lunch Asher had a private moment, wandering around. Lucas posed for me on this giant frog. I love that I caught him being candid. This beautiful smile is something of a rarity these days.
Here’s Danny in front of the elephant area. Just when I was getting used to calling him Dan, he told us that he’s changed his mind and actually prefers Danny. OK. No problem! Danny happens to live just a few blocks from this great zoo. Our coming into town gave him a great excuse to hang out with us there for an afternoon.
We saw four elephants. I think there might be others in the herd, but only four were in view. I’d like to think that the animals have a backstage where they can unwind, let their hair down, and … have a beer?
We rounded out the day with a ride on the little zoo train. Asher was thrilled. Lucas couldn’t be bothered to get excited about the ride, which is funny to me because for four solid years nothing was more important to him than trains! Ah well. I guess we all outgrow our childhood obsessions eventually.
And last but not least, here is a great shot of Danny and Ian and Kellie at the Sacramento Zoo circa 1979.
It was a wonderful weekend of friends and fun! I’m so glad we were able to take this trip!
