Last day of fun stuff! 🦅🦇🦉🐍🐊🐅🐆🦧🦍🦓🦒🐘🎄🦏

We woke up in Indiana and headed through Indianapolis to Ohio! We are headed to the Cincinnati zoo to see Fiona the Hippo, I have followed them on Instagram since she was born premature! I was so excited to see her…yep was, this is 2020 right?? No moose, no northern lights, no Fiona!

We arrived early enough to see the animals before the Festival of lights started. It wasn’t your typical zoo visit, a lot of the animals were in for the winter, but we actually had some really cool experiences with some of the animals in their indoor enclosures.

First though, we headed to see Fiona…at this point I didn’t realize it had to be sunny for her to be out and three degrees warmer than it was.

Out first stop was the elephants, they were training them which was neat, one was actually playing fetch with the trainer!

Then off to the giraffes, Ry’s favorite. They have a baby giraffe she wanted to see, Theo!

We got to see them up close because for the most part they were indoors! Our next stop was at the painted dogs. The zoo keeper was placing raw meat around the yard so we waited for them to come out and it was so cool. They ran all over some even fought for the meat!

We also visited the orangutan indoors, he swung all over, all around and stopped for pics and everything! It was crazy! We usually just see them sitting around, this guy was huge over 6 ft tall and his name was Henry!

Fiona was up next and I was so excited…we were finding little Fiona fairies and everything…then we came to her water hole and there was nothing!!! I was so so bummed 😭 they didn’t even have a sign explaining where they were. At least the fairies were cute!

Next stop was the Rhino’s they have a 3 month old Rhino…he better be there!!!!

He was!!! Ajani Joe was having the best time, he was running around, kicking up dirt, and playing with toys. He was so much fun to watch! And he was absolutely adorable!!

We headed off to different areas searching for animals! In the indoor monkey enclosure there was a chimp that was fist bumping Ryanna against the glass! In a nocturnal area there was an active aardvark that was digging at and playing with Bree’s hand against the glass. It even flopped over on the ground digging at her hand! It was so neat!The penguins also interacted with Ry’s hand. It was so fun we’ve never seen animals respond to us quite like this!

And then there was Samantha! The 50yr. Old gorilla! It was pretty neat! I thought oh I can take a pic with her! We found one sleeping rather gracefully so we thought for sure it was her, and snapped a pic!

Surprise…it’s a silverback male gorilla…🤦🏻‍♀️ ugh…no Samantha either!

We ended our animal hunting with Samantha, time for the Festival of lights! It was getting dark and the zoo looked amazing with all the lights!

We walked the entire zoo again looking at all the beautiful lights and paper animal lanterns everywhere! No words can do it justice so enjoy all the pics!