mistressofmuses

The final post about our trip to the zoo!

Once again, most of these pictures are from inside the Tropical Discovery building, which is always my favorite, ha.


Eyelash viper, indeed showing off some lovely lashes.

Eight pictures below the cut:

This monitor was climbing up the tree right as we arrived.


Cobra!


They seem like they're just hanging out.


This guy looks like a little dragon!


Last time someone said the alligator snapping turtle looked like it was just an ordinary-sized turtle, so this time I attempted to get an object for scale. Unfortunately a large crowd of people were coming up, so I didn't get to position my for-scale water bottle the best. The bottle is closer than the turtle, so he's really still even bigger than he looks!


Just a wonderfully polite looking komodo dragon. Would never bite you and leave you to die of sepsis.


Chameleons are so cool. I love their mitten hands.


This guy came right up to stare back, haha.

I love the salt and pepper rattlesnake. :)

(It's not just the "Denver Zoo" anymore, ha.)

The Monday before my birthday, Alex and I went to the zoo. :)

It was a really pleasantly warm day, so it was great for walking around!

Less great for walking around was how much pain Alex was in. He was unfortunately hurting pretty badly, but we made it through most of the zoo, and did stay until closing! Just sucky that it did make parts of the day a bit less enjoyable for him.

One thing we hadn't done before was ride the train, ha. It's a mini railroad that takes you on about a five-minute loop around a bit of the zoo. It was just a few dollars to ride, so we decided to do it, haha. It was fun!

As always, took too many pictures, so I'll split it into three posts. This one for the birds and mammals, and probably one for fish and frogs, and one for the reptiles.


Both tigers were out. This is the bigger, male tiger. He was enjoying his pool!

Eleven more:

Flamingos! They're fun to watch. The one running through the water was chasing others around for a bit.


The tiger was rubbing his face on the edge of the pool and looked just like a housecat. But big.


Lookit the kitty!


We wandered by at the right time for one of the elephant demonstrations.


Will lay down for some veggies.


While the event hadn't officially opened yet, they had set up most of the lanterns for their "Glowing Wild" event. There were several really neat displays! This was clearly one of the most dramatic.

(The lanterns are clearly by the same company that did the ones we saw at the lantern festival at Four Mile park last year. Very cool! I bet they're really neat after dark.)


Lemur! :D


Closeup lemur! :D Mmm, broccoli.


Fancy crane in the aviary.


This little duck apparently wanted to come fight lots of peoples' legs. Including mine.


Sleepy flying foxes!

We did hang out all the way until closing time (4:00, which felt very early, especially post-time-change.) We did skip a few areas, or kind of had to breeze through them, but we saw most of what we hoped to.

As we were heading toward the exit, we both got free pretzels, since they'd be thrown out at the end of the day. Score!

As we left the elephant passage area, Alex remarked that he wanted to see an elephant actually use the bridge. You always walk under it, but we haven't ever seen any of the elephants using it.

And immediately...


Alex summoned him!

For Alex's birthday, we went to the aquarium! It had been a few years since we went, so it was exciting to get to go back, as always.

Splitting the pictures into two posts, so there aren't too too many in one post. No theme to which pictures are in which post, just a chronological trip through the aquarium.


I love these guys. You walk underneath them and look up at them schooling.

Fourteen more pictures below the cut:

This face made me laugh.


Very atypically-colored trout! It seemed to love showing off, coming right up to the glass, ha.


Posing so perfectly!


Across from the sturgeons (big), there's a reconstruction of a mosasaur (Very Big.)


Little shark and rays!


Smiling ravioli photobomb!


Multi-colored seahorses! I love them.


Seahorse!


The sea is full of bizarre creatures. (YOU CAN SEE THROUGH ITS FACE.)


A little flight of rays.


These guys were cool.


Sharks and flounder!


Little urchin and fashionable shell hat!


Impressive orange lipstick.

Such a lovely tank! So many sea stars.

(And now I am starting to really feel that "spring forward" thing, so I'm going to take a nap, haha.)

On Tuesday there wasn't much we had time to do while out on the plains, since it was a very long drive back. Our target for a quick wander (which conveniently took us past the derailed train we'd wanted a better look at) was the France-Harker Cemetery, listed on the Kiowa County Library site as one of Kiowa county's "lost cemeteries" that they were trying to preserve.

Their directions were... not great.

They were mostly correct, and did take us down the correct zigzag of unpaved county roads, but faltered at the last step. The directions say 3/4 of a mile... it was actually closer to two miles? Two miles isn't that far, but it's significantly farther than 3/4 of a mile, and we u-turned a couple times thinking we must have missed it, trying to track exactly how far we were going. Finally we just shrugged and decided to keep going, and yup. Just a lot farther than advertised.


It's not a large cemetery.

The informative blurb on the library site says it has 21 grave sites, with 10 preserved headstones. The earliest known grave is for Frank Chilson, who died in 1895, and the latest known is Charlie V. France, who died in 1942.


One of the prettiest headstones. "Mattie V., wife of James D. Gordon."

Twelve more pictures:

Blanket flowers, on the way in.


Another pretty headstone, matching the one above, though they have different flowers carved at the top. "James W. Gordon, son of Mattie V and Jas D Gordon."

Paints a sad picture together. Mattie, the woman whose headstone I have above the cut, died just a couple weeks after her son James was born. He lived to just shy of six months.


Another child's grave. "Emma Elizabeth, daughter of D.W. and Mary C. France."

And her parents:


"D.W. France."


"Mary C. France."


"Charlie V. France." This is the last known burial in the cemetery. Though it appears that Lydia (presumably his wife) was intended to be buried here, but wasn't. That always makes me wonder what happened.


There are several of these metal crosses, I assume marking the 11 grave sites that there are not surviving headstones for.


Look at those prickly pear spikes!


Some very impressive spiderwebs in a prickly pear. Quite a protected spot to be!


"Suda, wife of E.J. Henery."


"Chester J., son of E.J. and Suda Henery." (This is the same stone as Suda's, just a different side of the marker.) (Sorry I didn't get my shadow out of the shot.)


"Joseph Kesler."


The oldest known burial in the cemetery. "Frank B. Chilson."

On both our way in and the way back out... COWS.

So many cows on the road! Bella was not sure about this, though she calmed down pretty quick from "deeply concerned" to "simply interested."

Three more pictures of cows:

I like the one with grass hanging out of her mouth, ha.


Several calves, a few cows that looked very pregnant.


Cute white face.

It was nice that we had a chance to at least do something else before heading home, since it's certainly not an area we travel through very often. It was a good weekend in general. We don't often have the chance to go do overnight trips anywhere, but this definitely needed to be; way too far to head out and back in the same day. I'm glad we finally got to go to Sand Creek, tragedy though it is.

After Butterfly Wonderland, we did sit outside for maybe twenty minutes or half an hour, hoping Taylor would start to feel better. Luckily they did! So after that, we headed toward the OdySea Aquarium.


There were a ton of rays, which I really loved.


Seahorses!!


I was extremely charmed by the variety of clownfish! I don't think I've ever seen this many kinds before.

( Twenty three more below the cut: )

My mom and Taylor have adopted a cat. <3 They picked her up on Friday.



She's 14, though she seems to be in very good health. She was picked up as a stray, but was microchipped. Checking the microchip, it turned out she'd been adopted as a kitten (or young cat; unsure) from the same rescue that had picked her up. Apparently, attempts to contact the original adopters and microchip contact information yielded no response.

She was given a pretty extensive dental procedure and wound up having several teeth extracted. She's otherwise very healthy! A bit underweight, though she'd gained about a half a pound while in the shelter, though lost some of that post-dental-surgery.


You can see the shaved patches on her legs where she got IVs for the surgery.

She doesn't have a name yet: my mom was leaning toward "Mocha", though my favorites off the brainstorming list were "Blackberry" and "Nebula."

I also put forward that she should get a creepy/magic-themed/ominous name, because her intake weight after being picked up by the rescue was 6.66 lbs. (Grimoire? Spellbound? Macabre?)

She is astoundingly sweet. She's already settled into the house like she's owned it all along. She's very content to lay in a lap for hours. She purrs like a little jet engine. She wanted pets from me and from Alex the instant we met her, and gives lots of headbutts. My mom and Taylor have both remarked on how gentle she is. She's very talkative, though her meow is a little rough, so she sounds grumpy even though she's not.

She does not like other cats, and has never been tested around dogs. We'll have to see whether my mom can still watch Cy and Bella occasionally for us... Bella has also never been tested around cats. (Cy loves cats.)

I'm so glad they have her. <3

On the 18th, we decided to go to the zoo. It was a slightly cooler (though still pretty hot) day, so it was a decent day for walking around, and we hoped that the animals would be more likely to be out as well.

I do feel like I should mention... we're really lucky that Colorado has a program where SNAP recipients get steeply discounted entry to most of the publicly funded scientific and cultural attractions in the city, which includes things like the zoo, the museum, and the botanic gardens. That's the only reason we are able to go to these places, because otherwise it'd be a lot harder for us to afford.


All four of the lions were out, but I liked the picture of these two. Though it looks a bit like a meme template, with the one lurking behind, haha. (He was actually yawning, not snarling, ha.)


From the Tropical Discovery building, a neat lizard I don't remember seeing on previous visits.

( 18 more pictures behind the cut: )

So one of the cool things that Colorado has done is roll out an option during vehicle registration that allows you to pay an extra fee that purchases you a Colorado State Parks pass. It's less expensive than the regular annual pass, and you just show your registration when you enter the park. (My mom was kind enough to pay the fee for us as a gift, which was very sweet of her.)

We had to pick up our vehicle registration from her anyway, so on Sunday evening we stopped by... and decided to IMMEDIATELY put the pass to use on Monday, ha.

Our first park excursion was to Golden Gate Canyon State Park, which is a park we had not been to yet. It's up in the mountains, overlooks part of the Continental Divide, and sounded quite pretty.

We... maybe should have picked a slightly easier one to start with, ha. None of the trails within the park are rated lower than "moderate", which is typically within my tolerance level, but I am woefully out of shape. Still! It was a good time. We brought Bella along (though a real hike is beyond Cy's ability any more.) Bella did great!

When we came into the park, we went to the visitor center to check in. There's not always any super exciting info, but I always like to check in if I can and find out if there've been any interesting animal sightings or if there's trail info we should have, or things like that.

Nothing major this time, though there'd been a moose sighting the night before. (Though no mooses for us.)


A view of the continental divide. :)


A really beautiful columbine. Our state flower!

( More below the cut: )

And then when we got home, Bella wanted to sniff a crumpled up leaf on the ground out in front of the building. Alex was pulling her away so she wouldn't eat it when...


That's no leaf! It's a really neat sphinx moth!

I don't know why the poor thing was in the very middle of the sidewalk! It looked pretty "fresh", so hopefully it was just waiting to dry so it could fly off. I moved it to the planter as a hopefully safer spot.

And here's round two of the pictures from the botanic gardens on Monday. These are the non-flower pictures, so mostly animals or non-blooming flowers.


A night heron! Spotted this guy shortly before we were nudged toward the exit. He was over by the koi pond, just past where Alex was standing. We didn't notice him at all at first!


And a nice little patch of succulents growing in a log.

( 11 more below the cut: )


And one more shot of the night heron, through the tree it was perched under.

Zoo part two!


Festive Halloween decorations continued!


Loved this boa. :)

( 8 more below the cut, quite a mix of animals: )

I think we will have to loop around the other direction next time, or actually plan enough ahead to get an earlier ticket time! I would have thought five hours would be enough, but we took our time and got to watch a lot of the animals being active, which was absolutely worth it!