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Monday, July 28: The Denver Zoo
Aug. 2nd, 2025 08:13 pm(I guess now it's the "Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance," but I still just think of it as the Denver Zoo, lol.)
On Monday we went to the zoo! We very much ran out of time, and really made it through less than half of the zoo as a whole, so we'll probably try to go back pretty soon. (We are able to get in quite cheaply because Alex gets food assistance... though they raised the price on those tickets and now limit what hours you're allowed to come. Still glad to have the program, since otherwise we couldn't afford to visit at all, but it sucks that you can't come early and spend the whole day.)
This was also an extremely hot day, one of the hottest we've had in a while (it did briefly hit 100°!) so lots of the animals were taking naps in the shade, or went to their indoor enclosures.
We spent most of our day in Tropical Discovery (my favorite, the building mostly devoted to reptiles, amphibians, and fish), so this post will be everything that wasn't in Tropical Discovery. (That still means this post only has like, a third of the pictures I took, but it was the best way to break it up that I could figure out.)
One of the things we keep wanting to do, but always end up running out of time for (even when we used to be able to come earlier) was visiting Stingray Cove. It's a seasonal exhibit where you can pet stingrays (and potentially sharks, though none of them came up for petting while we were there.) It costs a couple extra dollars, and for a couple extra more you can get some fish to feed them, too. This time we decided to do this first, so we couldn't run out of time to do it!
Such a variety of colors!
Cownose rays really do just have a perfect " :3 " face.
I know that's their gills, but they also have a perfect " >w< " face.
Baby ray perfectly lined up with one of the adults.
In addition to the cownose rays, there are also southern stingrays. They're so much bigger!
Then we headed toward the Tropical Discovery building, but took a detour to see more animals:
There's a baby giraffe! :D
All four giraffes!
Then up "Harmony Hill," where you can see a couple native animals:
The grizzly bear!
The pair of leucistic raccoons. One splooting in the heat, the other heading to the water dish.
And over to the new flamingo habitat:
Flamingos! :D (I like that you can see the big lego sculpture flamingos in the background, ha.)
And then we spent a few hours in Tropical Discovery, haha.
After that, we tried to do a speed loop through the rest of the zoo to see some favorites, but had to skip basically 80% of the rest of it.
Possibly the weirdest "favorite" animal I have is the Malayan Tapir. (And yes, I have been thriving with all the adorable videos of the baby tapir at the Point Defiance Zoo.) I don't know that I can say I have a true favorite animal, because I really do love so many. Point me toward a frog or a snake or a bird and those are all my favorites, find me a cool bug and that's my favorite, bats, giraffes, okapi, foxes, cheetahs, etc. All favorites. But I do have a very specific soft spot for Malayan tapirs.
Tragically, almost every time we've come to the zoo, the tapirs aren't out in their enclosure. The only time in recent memory that one of them was was the time that Alex wasn't feeling well and stayed home. So he hasn't seen the tapirs in forever. I used a Malayan tapir sticker in my tracker this week, solely in the hopes of summoning it, haha.
Success!
She was napping!
It was really very hot out. Everyone was napping.
A napping zebra.
A napping hyena.
Alex's request for his other favorite thing to try and visit before closing time was "Primate Panorama" where the great apes are. (The apes are not typically my favorite, but they're neat to watch, and he humored me with my favorites, so to the apes we headed!)
There is a baby orangutan, not quite two years old, and she is very cute. (Not a great picture with the reflection on the glass, but oh well.)
She climbed into the bucket, haha.
Though eventually climbed back out and onto mom.
And a gorilla!
It was a bummer we didn't have longer, but it was still a lot of fun. We'll have to go back sometime soon and see if we can get through all the parts we missed this time around.
On Monday we went to the zoo! We very much ran out of time, and really made it through less than half of the zoo as a whole, so we'll probably try to go back pretty soon. (We are able to get in quite cheaply because Alex gets food assistance... though they raised the price on those tickets and now limit what hours you're allowed to come. Still glad to have the program, since otherwise we couldn't afford to visit at all, but it sucks that you can't come early and spend the whole day.)
This was also an extremely hot day, one of the hottest we've had in a while (it did briefly hit 100°!) so lots of the animals were taking naps in the shade, or went to their indoor enclosures.
We spent most of our day in Tropical Discovery (my favorite, the building mostly devoted to reptiles, amphibians, and fish), so this post will be everything that wasn't in Tropical Discovery. (That still means this post only has like, a third of the pictures I took, but it was the best way to break it up that I could figure out.)
One of the things we keep wanting to do, but always end up running out of time for (even when we used to be able to come earlier) was visiting Stingray Cove. It's a seasonal exhibit where you can pet stingrays (and potentially sharks, though none of them came up for petting while we were there.) It costs a couple extra dollars, and for a couple extra more you can get some fish to feed them, too. This time we decided to do this first, so we couldn't run out of time to do it!
Such a variety of colors!
Four more of the rays:
Cownose rays really do just have a perfect " :3 " face.
I know that's their gills, but they also have a perfect " >w< " face.
Baby ray perfectly lined up with one of the adults.
In addition to the cownose rays, there are also southern stingrays. They're so much bigger!
Then we headed toward the Tropical Discovery building, but took a detour to see more animals:
There's a baby giraffe! :D
Four more pictures:
All four giraffes!
Then up "Harmony Hill," where you can see a couple native animals:
The grizzly bear!
The pair of leucistic raccoons. One splooting in the heat, the other heading to the water dish.
And over to the new flamingo habitat:
Flamingos! :D (I like that you can see the big lego sculpture flamingos in the background, ha.)
And then we spent a few hours in Tropical Discovery, haha.
After that, we tried to do a speed loop through the rest of the zoo to see some favorites, but had to skip basically 80% of the rest of it.
Possibly the weirdest "favorite" animal I have is the Malayan Tapir. (And yes, I have been thriving with all the adorable videos of the baby tapir at the Point Defiance Zoo.) I don't know that I can say I have a true favorite animal, because I really do love so many. Point me toward a frog or a snake or a bird and those are all my favorites, find me a cool bug and that's my favorite, bats, giraffes, okapi, foxes, cheetahs, etc. All favorites. But I do have a very specific soft spot for Malayan tapirs.
Tragically, almost every time we've come to the zoo, the tapirs aren't out in their enclosure. The only time in recent memory that one of them was was the time that Alex wasn't feeling well and stayed home. So he hasn't seen the tapirs in forever. I used a Malayan tapir sticker in my tracker this week, solely in the hopes of summoning it, haha.
Success!
She was napping!
It was really very hot out. Everyone was napping.
Two more nappers!
A napping zebra.
A napping hyena.
Alex's request for his other favorite thing to try and visit before closing time was "Primate Panorama" where the great apes are. (The apes are not typically my favorite, but they're neat to watch, and he humored me with my favorites, so to the apes we headed!)
There is a baby orangutan, not quite two years old, and she is very cute. (Not a great picture with the reflection on the glass, but oh well.)
Three more of the apes:
She climbed into the bucket, haha.
Though eventually climbed back out and onto mom.
And a gorilla!
It was a bummer we didn't have longer, but it was still a lot of fun. We'll have to go back sometime soon and see if we can get through all the parts we missed this time around.
