Down Under #20

I can hardly believe that we are now two-thirds of the way finished with Mikie's field trips. The Magic Tree House series continues even further (over 40 books) but after book #29 then they travel to Camelot and the Merlin Missions begin. Just by glancing at the titles of those books, I can tell there won't be any accompanying field trips. So, we'll savor every moment of the next 10 books and try to get to #30 Christmas In Camelot by December.

There are times when I wish Mikie would let us read a few books out of order, like High Tide In Hawaii , which would have been perfect a year ago when we were actually in Hawaii. As well as this one Dingoes At Dinnertime, also perfect last year when our VBS was Australian themed. But then again, I'm glad he likes to read them in order because they do have little mysteries to solve that would be spoiled by reading ahead.

So, back to the field trip: Of course I wanted a zoo that had as many animals from Australia as possible, which led us to the Catoctin Zoo near Frederick, Maryland. Since our weekends are filling up very quickly, we decided to head there after church on Sunday and we arrived at about 2:30 pm. Had I not just witnessed us crossing the border into Maryland, I could have sworn we were back in WA...It was that kind of a day...beautiful in my eyes.......low 60's, overcast, a chance of occasional drizzle.......jacket weather! Perfect!!!! And the best part.....hardly any people!!!!!!! It was a great escape and a fabulous family day.

Mikie at the entrance to the Australia exhibits. I love that they had aboriginal paintings on the fence and one of them was the serpent from our book!

Heading into the outback.
We heard the cassowary make a funny call. Mikie does some research about the emus.

The Emus were very curious...

Mikie wanted them to see their pictures in the book, but they almost ate this page.

When we approached the kangaroos and the dingoes neither animal was visible from the path and I was beginning to think that we should have drove to another zoo. But then a worker walked by and said she would try to lure them out of their dens. It worked!

This is one of only four zoos with dingoes on exhibit and we got to see him!

The boys had fun running back and forth to race the dingo from one side of his cage to the other. Video below:

Then the kangaroo came out to see us. When we were at this zoo 5 years ago, I remembered there being a lot more kangaroos. The zoo keeper told us that they used to have many more, but only one was left after visitors accidentally poisoned them by feeding them buttercups.

This was the lucky one who came out for us to observe the way he jumped and used his tail for balance.

Although you can't tell it from this picture, Zachary really enjoyed the "tain-duh-roo." He even got a stuffed one as his souvenir. It has quickly become one of his favorite animals; as now he loves pointing out all the pictures of kangaroos in our books.

The only animal we didn't get to see (besides the Koalas-that we'd have to go to the San Diego Zoo to see) was the Kookaburra. His habitat was being renovated so he wasn't on display.

After leaving the land down under, we enjoyed the rest of the zoo. Zachary got to see his "mingos" and Mikie said his favorite was the snake house where were saw a lot of humongous pythons! But I think my favorite was watching the boys feed the goats, lamas, and alpacas in the petting zoo.

A face only a mother could love!

Just as we were getting into the car, it began to sprinkle. God's timing worked out perfectly for us today! It was time to end our field trip by going to the Outback Steakhouse for supper.

A little geography lesson and it was time to head home. Field trip #20 was a success!