Tuesday, January 22, 2013

One of the best things about being on vacation with friends is sharing the cooking of meals. This morning, Jim made omelets for all of us for breakfast. Fresh Florida oranges were a delicious finish. We have started calling our group “The Four Florida Well Fed Foggies”.

We decided to visit the Naples Zoo at Caribbean Gardens since mostly cloudy skies were forecasted for the day. We stopped on our way and the Hausers bought Bonita Springs hats. It was a group decision.

We arrived at the zoo about two hours after it opened and the parking lots were almost completely full. This 44-acre zoo was founded in 1919 by Dr. Henry Nehrling as a botanical garden. The mission of the zoo is “..to delight guests with the natural world to inspire conservation of our planet’s remaining wild areas and their wondrous inhabitants.”

We enjoyed walking through the zoo and taking a cruise on the lake. We observed animals in outdoor settings which I found especially beautiful.

 

 



The feature show in the open-air theater presented animals, birds and snakes.

Barb and I rode a camel named Joshua and we both quickly decided that we do not want to cross a desert with this mode of transportation.

Barb and I also fed a giraffe.

 

  

We watched the keepers feed the alligators. I definitely have no aspirations to do that job! At the sound of a loud bell, the gators swam to the feeding area and waited until the keeper individually called them. She asked them to come up on the land and then to open their mouths to receive the food.

  

   And they did it---every single one of them!

We purchased lunch at the jungle café and found a nice bench to sit on while we ate. I confess we did not think about the cold weather at home.

One of these parrots seemed to by trying to communicate with me. As I was standing beside him, he hopped down to his feeding dish and pecked in it several times. Then he picked up the dish with his beak, tipped it up where I could see that it was empty and I am sure I heard him say “Look, look”. Cordell heard it too.

By midafternoon we were tired and quickly decided that an ice cream snack would probably give us the energy we needed to make the trip back to our condo home away from home.

I had an especially challenging day which started out at breakfast when I almost completely turned over my full cup of coffee.  The second challenge came while we were waiting in line to get on the boat for the cruise around the islands and a bird pooped on the front of my shirt. Luckily I had a couple of wipes with me that cleaned up the mess pretty well. And the third challenge came when a honey bee stung my leg while I was minding my own business.

We are just loving Florida.