Ok, just like I promised, here is the first part of my series “Mike gets some culture.” Today, I’ll be talking about my day at the Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium.
It was one of those 90 degree days in October, so my mom and I decided to go early in the morning, one to beat the heat, and two, to get there before it got too crowded. Coal Hollow Road is closed due to a rock slide (and the guy whose property it came from wouldn’t let the inspectors on his land to see what could be done to fix it), so we went through Regent Square and down Penn Avenue to the Highland Park Bridge. I had actually come home that way once from Guyasuta, trying to beat traffic and working on not getting lost, so that was cool.
I’m not a huge fan of the parking lot at the zoo, it doesn’t seem like it was well laid out, but I can’t complain too much, we got a decent spot. We headed through the gate and up the escalator, which is a very strange experience, it really does feel like you’re going to fall (and for me it alternated between falling forward or falling back, so that didn’t help).
But then we got to the top and the fun started! The first exhibit was the snow leopard, and this was the only picture that really didn’t come out, which bummed me out. There were a lot of kids there too, which didn’t help, but the leopard was real active, so it was enjoyable. Right after were the tigers. Now separating these tigers from us humans was a ravine, maybe eight feet wide, which I still say the tigers could have easily jumped and killed us all if they really wanted to. They of course didn’t, and they were great to watch. I really like the pictures I took of the one at the waterfall.
By the way, if you haven’t already, be sure to check out the photos of my trip to the zoo!
Moving on, we saw the lions, and the male lion was roaring, although they were short, almost like a huge dog barking. You could tell he was real hot, which was sad to see. I’m also really proud of the lion pictures I took!
The elephants were awesome to watch, and we spent a good while watching them from different angles. They were having a good time moving hay around, but we didn’t see any play in the water, which was a bit disappointing, but we got to see so many it wasn’t that big of a deal.
The one thing that did make me sad was that we didn’t see any giraffes, but that just means I’ll have to go back to see them one of these days.
The monkey house was actually kind of boring, the glass needed cleaned on most of the attractions, so it was hard to see the monkeys. After going outside, we saw the gorilla lumber past, but that was it for him, he hid the rest of the time.
We breezed through the prairie dogs (they weren’t that interesting) and laughed at the “Savanna Grill,” it’s just like eating seafood at Sea World!
We went through the Aquarium next, which was awesome. We saw a bunch of divers working to clean the tank, which is something I really want to do if I have time (and after I get some more dives in). Also, the diver’s don’t wear fins, to protect the fish and so they aren’t kicking up as much dirt, but it must be even more of a workout than normal diving without them! We saw fish that looked like Marlin and Dori and even that one from the deep part of the ocean with the light it uses as a lure.
The penguin exhibit was small, and also the glass was dirty, but this one penguin kept swimming up to the glass to interact with a kid who was there with his family. And normally I would never take a picture of someone else’s kid, but it was really cool, I took a quick picture of the two of them.
The sharks were awesome, although I was hoping there would be some sort of identification chart to help us out.
After the aquarium came the polar bears, which even though they are cubs, are huge (and grow to be the largest land carnivore – watch out Steven Colbert!). They were sad and a little upset because one of their toys was stuck and they couldn’t get it back, but they would stop going after that every now and then to play with each other. We went down into the tunnel at just the right time, we saw both bears swimming along the tunnel and wrestling with each other.
That was pretty much the end of the zoo, there was a green tank that the filtration system wasn’t working properly yet, and then we headed back to the car and home.
Coming up next in the series (I think it was next): Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass! and Phipps’s Conservatory!
