California Trip Part 7 - San Diego Zoo

Thursday morning we were up and at 'em fairly early for a day at the San Diego Zoo and when I tell you it was a day I mean it because MY WORD the zoo is huge!!!  We got there a little after 10 a.m., picked up maps and set off on our day.

First stop - the koalas.  Griffin has been koala-obsessed for a couple of years now and when we found out that the San Diego zoo had koalas she was BEYOND excited.  When we were walking in the sweet lady scanning tickets asked G what animal she was most excited to see and when Griffin told her the koalas she goes, "oh! The baby is so sweet!" and I thought Griffin's eyes were about to pop out of her head because we had no clue there was a koala baby! 

When I tell you that she could have stayed there all day and watched them I mean that with 100% truthfulness.  There was a little bench by one of the viewing areas and she BEGGED us to just come back for her later. hahaha

Happiest girl in the world, right here!

We did manage to tear her away from the koalas and made our way around the rest of the zoo (with another stop by the koalas mid-afternoon) and we didn't leave until close to 5:00.  I'll spare you a ton of animal pics but know that the zoo is GORGEOUS and sprawling and if you need a good workout there are plenty of hills. hahahaha

My kids took turns with my "big camera" again and it was the cutest thing EVER.

Getting to see the polar bears was a highlight - we wished that they had been in the water but it was still precious to see them just lounging.  

I mentioned that my kids were taking turns with my good camera... well, at one point Mason starts scrolling through the pics he took and goes, "Mom!  I think I got a good one" and proceeds to show me this...

... I was blown away and couldn't stop complimenting him and was just gushing when he told me that he had actually taken a picture of the signage next to the cheetah enclosure.  Not sure how I thought he took that picture of this cat but apparently I hadn't thought it through that hard. hahahaha

We had such a great time and were so impressed by the zoo.  I'd heard that the safari park is excellent as well but we just didn't have enough time but if we ever go back we'll head there for sure!  If you're heading to the zoo be prepared to walk A LOT and be prepared to have zero clue where you are ;) hahaha

We had paper maps and the app and still had zero clue where we were 85% of the time.  For real - one of the most confusing map situations of all time. hahaha

Overall 10/10 HIGHLY recommend!

When we left the zoo everyone was STARVING (we had packed lunches and had snacks but it was still a long day and these boys like to EAT! hahaha) so we grabbed some car pizza ;)

We got back to Ocean Beach and pretty much immediately changed...

.... to spend some time at the beach (again). 

Sigh.  I miss it.

So if you end up going to Ocean Beach - there's a little staircase behind a fence that will look like it leads to nowhere... you hop the fence, go down the staircase then down some rocks and you're at the beach.  For the first couple of days we were there we kept seeing people and dogs on this little beach and couldn't figure out how they were getting down there so we watched with binoculars to figure it out. hahahaha