Day 36: 6/22/15 (Las Vegas via San Diego)
471 miles
We took Kristen’s
advice and woke up a little earlier to try and completely avoid commuter
traffic. Unfortunately this meant waking
up at 4:30am. Jillian ended up staying
up late trying to sort through all our receipts and expenses so Rico drove in
the morning while Jillian slept. We
would have considered stopping at some of the beaches along the way (Long Beach
and Laguna), but it was pretty foggy this morning so we figured it wouldn't
really be worth it. I guess our timing
was perfect though because we didn't hit any traffic at all, but we ended up
arriving at the zoo about 1 ½ hours before it opened. We hung out for about an hour, slathering
ourselves with sunblock before heading to the entrance. Luckily, we could purchase tickets and enter
into the front of the park before 9am, though they had ropes up so you couldn't
access any of the exhibits. We grabbed a
map and tried to devise a game plan for the day.
We decided to jump on
the bus for a tour first so we could get an idea of the size of the park and
what exhibits seemed more interesting.
When we got back, we started at the Outback which is just full of koalas
(our favorite!). For animals that sleep
22 hours a day, many of them were awake and moving around. In one of the trees, there was a baby koala
piggy-backing his mom and moving all around which was fun to watch. There was actually a lot of baby animals around the
park. We saw a baby giraffe, jaguar, meerkat, and a ton of antelope/gazelle babies.
In the middle of our
day, we visited the maned wolf exhibit because there was a keeper talk
scheduled. We learned that the wolves
aren't really wolves; they're more closely related to foxes. They have very long legs and a gait like a
giraffe which is supposed to help them travel long distances. At the end of the talk, the two wolves did
some tricks and were fed some treats (mice).
One of the other scheduled items we made sure to catch was the treats
for the jaguars. We were really lucky
because the caretaker placed the treats directly in front of the window we were
sitting at. The mom came right away and
began licking her meat popsicles (at least that’s what it looked like), but it
took the cub a while to realize what was going on, and even then, he wasn’t
interested. A few more of our favorites
include the polar bears who were pretty playful in the water, the big Galapagos
turtles, and these alpaca-like animals who were scared of a dog. Someone was walking around with a service dog
and these animals were seriously checking him out. They would trot over and give him a look,
make a very strange sound, then run away and repeat several times – it was
pretty entertaining. One last thing that
we did was ride the Skyfari tram from one end of the zoo to the other. It’s a nice ride, but you can’t really see
any of the animals below.
After
about 8 hours in the park, we decided that we’d seen it all. We located a sushi place using the GPS and
headed there. They had happy hour specials
with really cheap sushi rolls so we picked out 3 rolls and shared some katsu
don, and holy crap were we full. With
that, we started on the road towards Las Vegas!
Jillian’s cousin is from Las Vegas so her sister and brother-in-law are
still living out there and she set us up to stay with them for a few days. It was a long, exhausting day, but we made
it! At about 10pm we were driving by the
Mojave Desert and we could feel the temperature change. According to the car’s temperature gauge, it
was 100 degrees out! Finally, at midnight
we arrived in Las Vegas. Obviously we
knew their house number, and they said they would leave the door unlocked, but
for some reason we still felt like we were breaking into someone’s house. Jillian went in first to try and find some
family photos to make sure we definitely were in the right house (no photos on
the fridge wasn’t helpful). Eventually
she spotted a homemade calendar with family photos which made us feel better
about bringing in a bunch of our stuff and climbing into a bed to sleep.
Fact:
Maned
wolves are the only species in their genus
Lesson:
If you
want to see a Panda at the Zoo, be prepared to wait in line for an hour
Eat Well; Travel Often
Rico & Jillian
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