Armed Forces Day 17 May 2008

Today was Armed Forces Day. In celebration of that, the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence offered free admission to active-duty members and half-price admission to family members. The girl selling tickets messed up a bit, though, and only charged us one half-price child admission. So all three of us got into the zoo for $3, where any other day of the year, it would cost us $30. Score!

I didn’t have very high hopes for this zoo. We went to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, and we were very much less than impressed. Then again, it was the winter season, so maybe that was the problem. But I wasn’t expecting much from the Roger Williams Park Zoo as a result.

I was really quite pleasantly surprised! It’s a much larger zoo than I anticipated, and it was so clean and bright and inviting. The animals looked well-cared for, and the enclosures were well-done. It wasn’t a very large zoo, not by any means, but it was definitely worth driving the 45 minutes to get there.

Grace, of course, had a blast. She loved seeing all the different kinds of animals, from the giraffes to the elephants to the tortoises.

But what interested her the most? The military helicopter that was brought in to help celebrate Armed Forces Day. The monkey exhibit was right next door, but she couldn’t be bothered to look at her favorite animals because holy cow — there was a helicopter to play on!!

She even got to sit in the pilot’s seat.  This was the second time she had been in a helicopter.  She was airlifted the night she was born, so this was old hat to her.

We had a lot of fun with each other at the zoo.  It was nice to smile and laugh and not worry about anything.

Kurt was really cracking me up.  I know we have our issues, but he does make me laugh.  He was trying to take a photo of some red deer a long ways off through some underbrush when I decided to mess with him.  Right at the last moment, I stuck my hand in front of the lens as he released the shutter — and he managed to take a photo of my palm on extreme close-up.  Fortunately he thought it was just as funny as I did, so we laughed and laughed at each other, until he decided he needed to get serious about taking a photograph.

Later on, he was trying to take a photo of a tortoise.  There was a lot of shade today, so I told him to pop up the flash.  He did, but when he took the photo he complained that the flash didn’t go off!  He pops up the flash again, gets ready to take the photo, and whammo — the bill of Kurt’s hat closed the flash again.  I don’t know why that was so funny, but it was hilarious to us.  Again, we couldn’t stop laughing.

One thing that I love about going to the zoo is the people-watching.  You wonder whether these people really looked in the mirror before they left the house in that outfit.  You wonder how often that mother yells at her kids.  You wonder why that woman didn’t bother to put her teeth in before she left the house.  You wonder why that dad let the mother struggle to get lunch to the table while also trying to maneuver a stroller to the picnic table.

It’s a lot of wondering, but it’s fun to try to figure people out.  And then there are those you just can’t figure out at all, and you’re left shaking your head at them.

And you just know Jeff Foxworthy would have a field day with these people!!