Adirondack Animal Land

Last year was our first experience with Adirondack Animal Land.  We were impressed last year and this year definitely lived up to it.

MiniM.E. remembered everything about last year, down to the last detail, and had the whole visit planned out in her head before we even got there.

First stop, feed the giraffes:

However, on our way down to the rest of the animals, MiniM.E. saw an area of mechanical ride-on toys and claimed that the only reason she wanted to come to the zoo in the first place was to play there.  NOT, as she previously told us, to see the animals.  Which is interesting as I'm not sure we even looked at those last year.

I dragged her away, insisting that we were here only to see the animals, but to prevent a melt down told her we could come back later if she still wanted.

Next stop for Daddy, feed the monkeys.  This one took the cereal right out of your hand.  MiniM.E. was definitely too timid to want to try it out.

dino break

 The zoo has lots of interesting animals like this really hairy cow:

alpaca

As soon as we got to the deer enclosure, MiniM.E. forgot all about the ride-on toys and anything else she might have been thinking of and fell head over heels in love with the deer.

it started with simply feeding them

then hugging

She would have been happy to stay with the deer the rest of the day she loved them so much.  But we had to make a safari before we left, so we headed back.

Again, this was a highlight of the trip.  This time the ride was more crowded and we had a hard time seeing some of the animals.  Most of the babies weren't born yet so I guess we'll just have to go back in July!

Daddy coaxing a camel

LittleL.G. loved watching the animals

Camel on board!

We were thinking one more giraffe visit and then head out...

not impressed.

 But then we realized we missed a section and Daddy wanted to feed the monkeys again.

We saw this enclosure of capybaras.  Now, MiniM.E. didn't really want to feed any of the other animals except her deer.  But for some reason she took a liking to these giant rodents.

She said they were so cute and liked their whiskers and wanted to feed them.  They seemed to like her too.

Glad they were friendly enough, because these are their teeth! Yikes!!

I guess after feeding the capybaras, she felt like going on a feeding frenzy because then we fed these goats for a while:

 And somehow we ended up back at the deer enclosure and stayed until the zoo closed!