Portland Zoo

At the end of September Jason had his 10 year High School Reunion. We decided that we would attend, and we ultimately had an alright time, but my favorite part of the weekend had nothing to do with the reunion at all. To facilitate the weekend trip to Longview, Jason took that Friday off and we headed down to his parents house Thursday night after he got off work. Reunion activities didn’t start until Friday night, so we decided to get up early on Friday and take the boys down to the Portland Zoo. After all, Jason’s parents were both at work and his siblings were off at school so we’d have been hanging out at their house alone all day anyway.

So off we trooped to the zoo. It was a typical Pacific Northwest day weather wise – overcast and slightly drizzling. This was actually our second trip to the Portland Zoo and we love it because of their Sea Lion exhibit. You ever notice how each zoo seems to have their own specialty exhibit? To me the Seattle Zoo’s Bear and Otter exhibit can’t be beat. Tacoma is definitely the Beluga Whale. Salt Lake has a relatively new and terrific Elephant exhibit. You just have to go to them all to see the different animals and habitats. At any rate, Portland excels with their Sea Lions which are just enormous. They swim laps around their habitat and always swim right in front of the huge underwater glass. You can see Austin (red hood) standing in front of one of the sea lions as it passes.

We also met a very nice Sea Otter family while we were there.

Here's Sea Otter Mom

Sea Otter Austin

And Sea Otter Lucas

Sea Otter Dad was taking the pics and for whatever reason we didn’t think to switch places and get a picture of him so I’ll throw in one of him and Austin by the bears at the front gate.

And just to wrap things up, later that weekend, Jason’s brother, James, brought several pumpkins he’d received free of charge to his parents house. We brought 2 of the smaller ones home, but there was one gigantic pumpkin that was for Grandma Crawford’s Kindergarten classroom. It was so big we just had to get some pics of Luke standing by it. Luke is 9 ½ months old in this picture and just a head taller than this 70 pound behemoth. Thanks for the pumpkins James!