Seneca Park Zoo.... and home.

It was my intention to bring Miles to as many decently large zoos as cross our path this summer, because large zoos are a bit thin on the ground, here in southwest VA. On Monday, July 2, then, we went to the Seneca Park Zoo, my childhood zoo, and we were accompanied by my dear dear friend Allison! We go way back. It was a total gift to catch up, however insufficiently, with Al.

 I like to say that Allison ordered my baby girl. When I first told Al I was pregnant, I was about 10 weeks along. And she responded with happy congratulations and then requested, "Please, can it be a girl?" I said, "I'll do my best." I was very pleased to hand Allison my rosy, fat, gorgeous, ginger, girl baby this summer.

 Though Rochester's heat wave was probably as nothing to what many of you are probably experiencing, it was too hot for comfort. Still, we had a full day of it and saw as many animals as we could wish. They were all very frolicsome, considering.

 Easy for the otters to be cheerful; they have a swimming pool.

 The rhino accepts that he will never be given a swimming pool. He doesn't mind; he is an ascetic.

 The tiger will one day menace his way into a swimming pool. By the way, he was barking at us. BARKING.

 Miles was also impressively frolicsome, and silly!

Only glass separates two potential best friends.

Or foes. We'll never know.

"You are all aware that it's 88 in the shade, are you not? Surely you have something better to do."

 The orangs had a cool tool use demo mound, where they used "straws" to extract some kind of treat from the center of this mound. And you know? A lot of animals were doing awesome things which we did not photograph. The wolves seemed to be doing some kind of group participation magic spell that involved trotting very determinedly in circles, and the polar bear just kept heaving himself back and forth in the pool, right before our eyes. But between the growing fatigue from SO MUCH FUNHAVING and the heat, we kinda felt like this guy when we left:

Fortunately, we were able to refresh ourselves (and half of us napped!) at the Browns, and see the dear Browns and their updated house, and we had one more lovely dinner with Dad before continuing our journey.
From Rochester we traveled to the Watertown area, to visit with Jon's relatives, who are mourning the loss of Jon's uncle right now (so say them a prayer!). From Watertown we drove to Scranton, spent the night in a hotel. Like real travellers!! It was so refreshing!! But btw, DON'T assume that if the hotel says they have cribs, that they have anything you would actually want to put your CHILD in, okay? Just... be warned. That thing would fail any moderately scrupulous inspection.

From Scranton, we made our plodding journey home and arrived in time to dinner at home and then take a walk up the hill on Lee Street, from the height of which we could take in Blacksburg's Independence Day fireworks. It was a perfect homecoming.