A Train and a Zoo Too!

Guys, this is the last post for July!  (Go ahead and remind me that it’s March, it’s okay.)  Hooray for any kind of progress!

                        
End of July means it’s almost time for Grammie to leave.  Sniff.

Before she does though, we have one more place to explore.  Logan had taken to checking out maps, including some maps on tourist brochures I brought home right after we moved here.  On his own, Logan picked out the picture of the train, matched the number of the picture with the location on the map, pointed it out to me and told me, repeatedly, “I want to go here, number eight on the map”.  (Seriously, it’s been how many months now and I still remember specifically that this was #8.)

       
So here it is, the train that inspired this particular trip.  In related news, Logan’s fascination with maps has largely continue since this time—the map-of-the-moment has changed frequently but he spends large chunks of time either reliving adventures or plotting out new ones with his maps.

              
The train, if I remember correctly, is a 1/3 scale model working steam engine and it makes a generously scaled loop through the rather large park.

            
Highlights of the mini-train trip include the “dawk tunnow” (dark tunnel in N-speak), the old American village with mining camp and water wheel, the real “ding-dong gates” where the train crosses over the road, and the fishing pond.

We don’t grant our children’s every wish, but every now and then it’s nice to be able to do something that one or the other of them has really wanted.

                            
But Logan’s find turned out to be even better than he expected because there was lots more!  There are a couple of playground areas of course, although I didn’t get any pictures of the one we visited on this trip; there was ice cream and . . .

a zoo!  A small zoo, admittedly, focusing almost exclusively on So. Cal. wildlife, but a pretty nice little place.  They’ve got two mountain lions who were rescued as cubs—their mother had either been killed or abandoned them—and because the cubs entered captivity so young, they don’t have any survival skills and can never be released.  But we got to see the zookeepers hand-feeding them, which was pretty neat.

                    
Both the kids were excited about the zoo, but Naomi was especially intent on a very active ferret (or similar burrowing rodent creature, I can’t recall specifically).  We had a hard time drawing her away from that one, but a few interactive exhibits distracted her again pretty quickly.

                                 
There was a very photogenic bear, 

                            
a small selection of birds (although I’m pretty sure peacocks aren’t native to the area),

and this handsome fellow among the zoo’s other offerings.

 
The petting zoo had a number of very friendly goats that you could feed and brush, and if you didn’t feed them fast enough and happened to be absorbed in taking pictures of your children, they would walk up behind you and take a bite out of the map that was sticking out of your purse!

In their defense, it was getting close to lunch time.  We left the zoo area, had a picnic in the park and headed home.

            
Time for one last story and then Grammie has to head home too! 

And with that, we finish out July, the month-that-took-me-six-months-to-blog.  Next up: all of August!