A beautiful Sunday afternoon

It was such a beautiful day that I couldn’t just hang out around the house, even though I’d have loved to spend all day diggin’ in the dirt planting flowers. So what did we do for the day? Well, that requires a bit of backstory.

You may have heard me complain about the demise of Opryland. (Yes, I fault Gaylord!) One of our favorite things back in those days was to buy a family season pass to the Opryland theme park. We’d then be free to come and go as much as we wanted over the entire season. But something unexpected happened. Entry into big parks like that is pretty expensive. So under normal circumstances of paying big money to bring the family there for the day, I’d always feel compelled to spend the WHOLE day there because it was so darned expensive. But once we’d paid all the costs up front with season tickets, we discovered that it was a great place to visit just for an hour or two when we wanted something fun to do. Since we hadn’t paid $30 per person to get in, there was no compulsion to make the most of each visit. In a way, it was really liberating.

Fast forward to today and Opryland is long gone. (I may yet one day forgive Gaylord for putting such a plebian mall, of all things, where good ol’ Opryland once stood.) But we still hadn’t found a good replacement for the season pass. But now, I think the kids and I may be on to something new – the Nashville Zoo. A family season pass is only $85! That covers up to two adults, four kids, and one guest of your choosing. So, not only did we go to the Zoo on Sunday, we bought season passes and fully intend to use them.

One thing that both I and the kids enjoy about the Zoo is it’s really good playground. In addition to the playground, there’s a really fun new carousel.

Dylan didn’t join us on this outing because he wanted to hang wit’ his homeys. But we still had a lot of fun. I’m rather impressed with the rate of growth for new exhibits at the zoo too. We went once in mid-summer of last year and I think they’ve added at least two or three new, large animal exhibits. I used to think of the Nashville Zoo as mediocre at best. But it’s definitely improving.

I think that the most fun we had was in the new “Lorakeet Landing”. It’s a small enclosed aviary where some really beautiful and friendly birds live. You can pay a buck to get some food to feed them and they’ll literally climb onto your hand, head, or shoulder to get to it. They also really liked shiny things so they were really cute when they’d gently bite at your silvery jewelry. Can you see the one trying to abscond with Katie Jo’s necklace. It loved her necklace! It came back two or three times to try and retrieve the necklace. The girls had the most fun with the lorakeets. I’m sure we’ll be doing that again a lot!

Wow! What a great day. We left at closing time (6:00 pm) after spending about five hours there. We were tired, but happy. The girls snoozed on the way home. Emily and I talked and hugged on each other. My feet throbbed and my back was sore. I guess that’s my age showing. On the other hand, what a great way to wear my sorry ol’ self out!

Cheers!

-Zebraman

Comments

  1. I love the Nashville Zoo. It has really grown over the past year. They have the best playground too.

Speak Your Mind

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.