Weekend in Review: Omaha Part 2

On Sunday we woke up and ate breakfast at our hotel (great selection... I love breakfast food!) then we headed over to the zoo.

We got there right as it was opening.  The Omaha zoo does charge admission but you do not have to pay for parking.

We first went to the Desert Dome which also houses the Creatures of the Night area in the basement.

Wallaby

Hogs - how cute are they sitting all together like that?

This cat was right above the hogs above... wonder how that makes this guy feel?

Bobcat

Aardvark - doesn't look much like Arther huh?

Beave - totally not a good picture, but the beaver area was REALLY cool they were swimming around and building a dam - so neat!



White alligator

Some other interesting things of note in the Nocturnal house - bats and really cool croc exhibit where one looked me square in the eyes - so neat!

Next we went over to see the Orangatans - one of Lindsey's favorites.

These apes were in the same area as the male orangatans - it was so cool - this one swung over to me when I was in the bubble and just stared at me

Not the greatest picture but one of the male orangatans - Lindsey taught me about the face plates - not all of the males get these and usually show who is the dominate male.  This guy was pretty crazy looking.  There was one other male - but mostly they hid.

 

The females were getting fed so there was quite a lot of activity in their area

Yep, that's pee

Next we headed over to the gorillas - I think we walked in just as they were let out in the exhibits.



Can you believe these big guys don't eat meat?

Here's the dominant male - he 'showed' haha

They also had female gorillas (not nearly as many of them in zoos... for instance the St. Louis Zoo doesn't have any)
 



Here's their 'baby' - four years old - you can also see mom in the background

It was really fun listening to Lindsey talk about the apes - I learned a bunch from her.  It's funny listening to her listening to visitors - like when they call these monkeys haha.  I mean I didn't know this until she worked in at the Zoo this summer - but monkeys have tails, apes do not.  She's really becoming very knowledgable!!

We first got a small snack ($8 bucks for a small pretzel and cheese and medium diet coke...) Then we saw the bears...
 



Look they have a polar bear!

Next we waited for the tram - while we were waiting we saw the large amount of peacocks they have at the zoo (seriously so many)



I took this one to show the babies

We rode the tram and saw some of the hooved animals... I should have taken a picture of the awesome giraffes, but didn't... we also saw the rhinos.  This is where we also went through the madagascar house (ring tailed lemars!) and saw the pathetic sea lion area (hey the one in St. Louis is pretty awesome now-a-days)



We then hopped back on the tram and saw the big cats - In the mean time we actually got to see these apes hooting and hollering - it was soo soo neat - I don't know how to get my video posted here, but maybe I'll figure it out soon for another post



Here's how close you can get to the cats - sadly they don't have the best cages...



A beautiful tiger - Dan wants one for Daddy to play with... pretty sure this tiger would eat Daddy pretty quickly

A white tiger - Dan says they are not that good b/c they are inbreed a lot... all the cats were pacing their cages.  Lindsey suspects it was feeding time although we didn't get to see that.

A beautiful male lion

Finally we looked at their aquarium.  This is where their penguin exhibit is.  We actually got to see feeding time there.  They also had this neat tunnel with sharks swimming over you... but it was annoying since there were like a million kids in it.  Kids at the zoo can be super annoying to non-kid-having-people.  I mean seriously don't let your kid bang on the window - that's not nice to the animals...
 

The jelly fish were the best part



Such weird creatures, but so pretty to look at

Needless to say we were pretty tired after all things zoo - we did see most of the zoo the things I know we missed were insects and jungle... but overall a lot of neat stuff!  It's a really cool zoo and if you are in the Omaha area I highly recommend going!

We finished off the day by going to dinner at Upstream Brewery. We started off with Hot Artichoke and Asiago Cheese Dip - which was awesome!!  I had their BBQ Chicken pizza which was good.  We finished off with Butterfinger Cheesecake and Caramel Apple Crisp - so good.

We headed back to the hotel and were done for the night.  We headed back to St. Louis on Monday.  Overall it was a great trip and had a great time hanging out with my mom and sister!!