Alaska Zoo

So, as I said in my last post, we've been here a year and celebrated by making a family trip to the Alaska Zoo. It was very awesome to see the wildlife that is native to Alaska, such as a Polar Bear, Wolves, Grizzly & Black Bears, a Lynx, and the Moose and Caribou. It was also interesting seeing and learning about other animals that can survive cold winters such as a Camel and Snow Leopard. I did miss seeing the variety that the Seattle Zoo has - such as all the African animals, but we still got to see a Siberian Tiger.... and seeing a Polar Bear up close was just as cool or cooler than seeing a Lion.

Here are pics from our zoo adventure:

 Watching the seals swim - I didn't get any good pictures of them because of the glass window

 Sea Otter

 The massive female polar bear - her feet are so HUGE!

 The Moose

 Watching the Grizzly Bears - they were a Big Hit

 The Lynx

 Umm... I think this owl is named Hedwig - it looks just like her to me!

 Such a pretty girl!

 Something interesting we read about camels is that they do not store water in the humps on their back, that acutally they store fat to burn for energy in their humps, and that double hump camels like this one are native to cold climates - such as Mongolia, as opposed to single hump desert camels.

 Trying on brother's sunglasses - but he won't wear them!

 Checking out the Reindeer - which means domesticated Carribou

 Happy camper in the stroller!

 The Snow Leopard - not the best pics due to where he was lying and the angles I could get through the fence since the glare from the sun was so bad off the glass.

 This is the very WILD but ever popular 6 Year Old, this particular speciman we keep at home

 The massive male Grizzly - check out the claws on this guy!

 The Black Bear

This is where Bubba decided to throw his sippy cup off the wooden bridge we happened to be walking on, where of course, the cup rolled off the edge into such deep brush that we had no idea where it landed.

 Disclaimer: The Alaska Zoo does NOT allow you this close to the animals to take pictures! All my pictures were taken with my telephoto lens - I love my 300 mm lens!

 The sleeping Siberian Tiger

 The Bald Eagles were singing...

 ... and Missy & Buddy were singing back :)

 The Alaskan Wolf

Which, truth be told, were a bit of a disappointment since I was expecting "Twilight" size wolves with how people talk about how big they get here... :)
edit: Hubby read this and informed me that they do get quite large, and these are pups

 The kids packed around the little camera and took a bunch of pictures at the zoo too - maybe that will be another post - all of their pictures from the zoo.

And last, and maybe least due to size, is the Artic Fox

This little guy is very tiny.

We did see a few animals at the zoo that I laughed about - like the squirrel and the crows they had caged up. The interesting thing is that while WA got me very used to seeing crows all over the place, AK doesn't have crows, they have ravens, which pretty much looks like a crow that have taken steroids and are huge! They can be a little scary sometimes.

Anyway, it was a great, fun trip to the zoo and we all had fun. And while I did miss the African animals that the Seattle Zoo has, I did not miss the Bug House, and thankfully Alaska doesn't have one of those- if they did it'd probably be full of mosquitos :)