Sioux Falls Saturday

On Saturday morning, Adam made a McDonald's run for us to have some hot breakfast along with the muffins I brought, then we headed down to the pool again. It was really cold in the pool area, and Ryan wasn't interested in doing anything other than sit or stand around in the 1ft area, so we quickly went back to the room and got ready to leave. We headed to the Sioux Falls Zoo around 11:30 and Ryan really enjoyed the indoor exhibits. He liked many of the outdoor events too, like the baby rhino, but was pretty disappointed not to see a lion or a polar bear. It's also a little hard to beat Omaha's penguin exhibit, but the weather was cool and it was nice walking around.

 

Ryan loves carousels and was excited to have a ride on the one at the zoo. Even though I get motion-sickness, I was the lucky one who got to ride with him since Adam was dealing with the hassle of a missed furniture delivery at the time and missed quite a few exhibits because he was on the phone.

What do you think Ryan is so excited for here?

If you guessed the 3 sleeping tigers that were the whole of the "Big Cat" exhibit or the invisible tortoises, you would be incorrect. If you guessed this...

 

...then you would be right. We rode the "Savannah Express" around the zoo and he liked seeing the animal hospital, giraffes, zebras, and ostriches from the car of the train. However, he kept putting his hands over his ears and asked in a very loud voice, "Mommy, what is she talking about?" whenever the conductor gave us some sort of extinction/"habitat encroachment" lecture.

  

On the way out of the zoo, we stopped for a little more time in the "Hy-Vee Farm" exhibit. I don't think grandpa would have been impressed with the "milking" activity, but Ryan showed off his dairy skills.

Then, we got some feed and let him feed various goats. This was probably his favorite part, besides the train.

We left around 1:30 and stopped for some Taco Bell (aka Fruitista Freeze with some Mexican Food on the side). Ryan fell asleep on the way home and didn't even wake up when we picked up Nika. We got home by mid-afternoon in time to deal with our new furniture (see next post) and we headed to Adam's parents for supper. It was a nice getaway and although it's disappointing to not have been able to take a week to go somewhere fun and exotic this summer, we enjoyed all the activities we got to do and these shorter trips seemed to be just fine for the stage of life we're in.