USA Tour: Day 6

Tuesday, July 30. National Zoo day! 

Grandpa offered to make pancakes, but cereal won out. Breakfast activity: countries word search on Organic Cocoa Bunnies box. Laureva asked Grandpa for a trumpet lesson. 

Maëva eventually joined in. They managed a few sounds and some elephant farts. 

Sylvain saw another deer this morning on his run. With run plus zoo, he logged 21,000+ steps today. Pam logged 10,000+ with just the zoo so we figured Sylvain doubled his run distance walking at the zoo. Big day for legs!

Metro to National Zoo. Woodley Park station has THE longest and steepest escalator I've ever seen. Nearly made me dizzy. Arrived at  the zoo about 10am. Highlights include: pandas (Maëva), elephants (Tanya, Sylvain, Galen), snakes (Laureva). Maëva asked to do a group photo. It turned out pretty well:

The photo spot was near one of the elephant watching points. Several elephants were active and pretty close. We noticed one big male spraying himself with water. Then he came right up to where we were and started throwing dirt all over himself. 

We were able to see three pandas in the Panda House. A male, a female and one of their offspring. They were mostly sleeping, but occasionally moved around. The male eventually got up and lumbered off. 

Laureva went in the Reptile House with Dad and Pam. She enjoyed seeing the snakes in general and didn't have a favorite. 

Other sightings: clouded leopard, Asian otter, gorillas, lionesses, orangutans, bison, zebra.

Other highlights: Ben 'n Jerry's to hold us over until late lunch and gift shop for girls to spend birthday money from Grandpa. Maëva chose a wolf stuffie. She named it Flora. Laureva chose an electronic panda bubble wand. All in all, we stayed about three hours. 

Back home about 3pm for a late lunch after a short stop to get bubble soap and some groceries. 

During rest time, Dad and I went back to the store to get the pizza cheese that had been forgotten. 

After rest, girls ran around and made up a role play story. Something about eleven-year-old Maëva asking Grandpa for permission to sleep at the zoo with her boyfriend Julian. 

Laureva requested goat cheese and pepperoni pizza for dinner. The rest of us had veggie or beef burgers. Yummy. Dinner entertainment: Sylvain and the girls did addition and multiplication problems in their heads. Grandpa explained the relationship between addition and multiplication to Laureva. 

Storytime: Cookie Monster (again!), Merritt Moore from Rebel Girls 2, Wizard of Oz.