My Trip to the Sedgwick County Zoo

This has taken a few weeks to get ready, but when I was on my way home to Omaha from Houston, I stopped in Wichita, Kansas for the night. They say that they have the best zoo in Kansas there – the Sedgwick County Zoo. I got up early in the morning in late January on a weekday. It was 32 degrees and I had the zoo to myself for the most part. I spent about 6 hours walking around and really had a nice time. I got a few photos that surprised me…like a rhinoceros sticking out her tongue. There was also a cardinal…I think I have mentioned that I often see cardinals at the zoo….making me feel like Joe is with me. This cardinal flew right into a coati enclosure to get my attention. He followed me around and so I got a lot of photos of him too. New fun fact: flamingoes actually don’t mind cold water. They were really noisy but splashing and having fun in the cold water. You could hear the lioness roaring at the lion from all over the zoo. You could see her breath in the cold air and that was pretty cool. Just hearing her give him a hard time about I don’t know what, but she was the epitome of “I am woman; hear me roar!” I was also chased by a wood duck, which was comical I am sure, but somewhat terrifying. The black swan also tried to approach me, but I don’t mess with swans – learned that the hard way as a kid. There must have been something strange going on in that aviary area because I heard several screams of people come from there. Either the ducks were chasing them, the swans, or maybe one of the free-roaming wallabies in the area snuck up and scared them. There were also these African Painted Dogs that were interesting. I don’t think I had seen them before. The buffalo here, Boomer, died this past week. He was so patient and let me take lots of photos of him. Their zookeepers are heartbroken at his loss, according to their FB page. Anyhow, I wanted to share some of my happy place times with you. The one random sunset shot is from my drive home that night to Omaha. I was in northern Kansas and just had to pull over and catch the beautiful colors.