Utah's Hogle Zoo

Another of our yearly stops when we visit Utah is Hogle Zoo.

We actually purchase our zoo memberships from Hogle because we visit every year, and with that membership we get into both Seattle and Tacoma zoos free. It works out quite nicely really. Angie and the boys go to both zoos up here with some regularity. Austin really loves the Tacoma zoo because of the beluga whales and walruses. Go figure.

At any rate, we were excited to see the new cat exhibit at Hogle, but we needed an expert map reader in order to find it. Luckily we brought Austin along for just such an occasion:

We missed the grand opening of the cat exhibit by a day last year. Lucas loves tigers so he was really excited to see this:

All they need now are some lions and they’ll be set. Seattle has some great lions so Luke gets his fix up here often enough.


Luke also really enjoyed the white alligator currently on display there. He’s got this thing with alligators. He walks around going “chomp, chomp”, moving his arms up and down, and then he comes and “chomps” on you. He thinks it’s the greatest thing. It’s quite cute really so we encourage it of course.

The baby giraffe was neat to see, although apparently not all that neat since we have no pics of that. The boys also really enjoyed the bird show:

Luke and I were sitting on the end of a row just a few rows up from the presenters so many of the birds came swooping right over our heads. He’s really fascinated with birds so he loved every minute of the show, including the low flying birds, which I thought would’ve kind of freaked him out. But it didn’t, he loved it.

Austin’s favorite part may have been eating lunch with the zebras. Note to self: lunch with zebras is not the most pleasing olfactory experience. But hey, how often do you get to each lunch with zebras, right?

We saw rhinos, snakes, camels, gorillas, orangutans, lemurs, bears, penguins, and sloths! Austin has taken to hanging onto my legs and being a sloth, wherein, you guessed it, he just sits there and hangs on and does nothing else. He thinks it’s the funniest thing.


Alas, despite all the cool animals and shows, the biggest hit of all just may have been the playground. They seriously need some shade at that place! The kids would love nothing more than to spend hours on end playing, but ultimately every parent gets tired of standing out in the sun, roasting alive, and thus call the kids to order and march on to other attractions, no doubt ones with shade. If there was shade at the playground, the parents could sit forever, the kids could play forever, and all would be happy, except perhaps the animals waiting to be seen. Here’s a few playground shots:


When all was seen and done, we stopped in to let the boys get little souvenirs. Austin picked out a huge plastic coloring mat, and Lucas ended up with a little rotating puzzle toy. In fact, Luke ended up with a little spin top as well, which we didn’t find until unloading the stroller back at the car (yes we returned it).

Thus concluded another great vacation day.