Where the Wild Things Are

A few weeks ago we took Maggie to the NC Zoo in Asheboro. We'd been wanting to go for a long time, but now Maggie's finally old enough to get excited about the animals and remember what she's seen.

We started the day off seeing the chimpanzees. A few of them were very interested in the people watching them and even imitated some of their movements. A zookeeper standing near to us heard me call Maggie's name. He said, "Where's Maggie?" I pointed her out, and he told us that the "alpha" chimp's name is Maggie! I said, "Our Maggie thinks she's the alpha, too!"

(Notice Maggie's elephant hairbow- a lady at church gave that to Maggie for her birthday.)

Then we rode the carousel (we had it all to ourselves!), which Maggie loved at the State Fair. On this day, however, she said it was too loud and only (reluctantly) rode once.

We visited the "bee hive" for Granddaddy's sake:

We had to visit the flamingos because Maggie was wearing a flamingo dress!
Here's her flamingo pose (It reminds me of the opening to "Three's Company"- anyone else remember that?):

Here's a lesson we can all from the elephants: "Mama's in charge!"

We worked up an appetite, so we took a little break for a picnic lunch:

family portrait:

When we got to the North America section of the zoo, we were a little disappointed that the polar bear was asleep. The harbor seals, though, more than made up for it! First, we saw a zoo employee feed them, then we watched them swim by the observation window (upside down!) over and over. Maggie loved it, until some other children got too loud near her.
Here's a video of Maggie watching the seals:

We ended the day at the gift shop, where Maggie tried on a pair of flamingo slippers that matched her flamingo dress:
This was just too funny:

At one point during the day, Maggie said, "so much to see!" We hope to visit the zoo again soon to see the animals we missed on this trip.