I have the day off with my girls and we are at the Minnesota Zoo. It is the first week of summer vacation and it’s as if all of Minnesota has descended on this patch of savannah/rainforest/prairie/desert.

Everybody’s smiling and pointing out the grizzly hiding behind the rock (I’d hide too if I were her) and the wild boar splayed out asleep in the afternoon heat. (Give the poor pig some privacy.) Everybody is so happy.

Everybody except me.

I like zoos. I do, I do. I love Como Zoo, which is nice, small, manageable in two easy hours. Including a stop for mac and cheese at the cafe. I even like the stinky giraffe house.

But the Minnesota Zoo is so big. And there are so many non-zoo things. Like a water park and an archeological dig/sand box and a playground. I consider all of these things perfect as single outings. Just not all together. And not in a zoo.

The archeological dig is an inspired idea, really. Kids dive right in and are shoveling away, unearthing bits of dinosaur bones. Trouble is, then you have to coax them out. All around me, parents are yelling at their kids, trying to get them to leave and move on. There’s so much more to see and it’s all really far apart.

Ditto the playground.

And what’s with this non-animal?

So onward. We spent four hours there altogether. It feels like eight if you’re pushing a double stroller. And that was just the outside areas. No dolphins, imax theater or indoor tropical animals.

The girls had a great time, despite their grumpy mommy. Of course we’ll be back.

We have to. We’ve got annual membership.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Rants, Things to Do. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.