Military Appreciation Day at the Montgomery Zoo

I've looked forward to taking the kids to the military appreciation day at the Montgomery Zoo for months.  Seriously, June 16 has been marked on the calendar since at least March.  

The Montgomery Zoo is fairly expensive.  An adult ticket is $15 and a child ticket is $11.  So that right there is $63 for us. (Veronica still gets in for free) Plus they have a wildlife museum that you can add on for an additional $5 to each ticket. So that brings our total to $88.  And then there's a train for $3 a ticket which would make this into a $106 trip.  

Obviously, for someone who writes a blog called 51 Cent Adventures, paying $106 to visit the Montgomery Zoo wasn't something I could easily justify.

Hence why I was looking forward to the FREE admission on Military Appreciation Day.    

At first I assumed that I'd have to prepare to take the kids all by myself since Brandon would be busy with flight school. But that turned out to not be a problem.  Brandon decided to make sure that he could come to the zoo with the kids and I by taking leave from work for that Thursday.  And since he didn't really have anything else going on we decided to turn it into a mini vacation and take Friday through Monday off as well.  

So going to the zoo became the first day of this mini vacation.  We were all super excited and determined to maximize our time at the zoo.  I made sure we packed the wagon so we'd be able to tow around any tired kids.  The wagon hardly fits in our car, but with a little bit of squishing we got it in. 

We arrived at the zoo a little bit after it opened at 9:00.  Since this was our first visit we just kind of wandered around at first trying to figure out the lay out.  We found this little aviary, and saw a Scarlet Ibis.  Back in 9th grade I read a depressing short story about a Scarlet Ibis and I've always wanted to see one for real.

We also saw flamingos which brought back fun memories of when the twins were Veronica's age and they called them Fing-a-ming-gos.

Then we started to see bigger animals such as this Jaguar that we all called a Panther.

This zoo had a lot of shade which was nice considering this was June in Alabama. We were still hot, but at least we weren't baking in the sun.

Anyway, we saw many animals and I really could fill this post up with a picture of each one.  But that would boring.  So just know that we saw lots of animals in cages and such.

We also saw these quail like birds walking around.  Derrick kept asking to "Hold it." and running up to them.

Derrick was really interested in all the animals which made me happy.  He's been to different zoos at least 8 other times in his life, but in many ways this felt like his first visit.  He certainly cared more about looking at the animals than he has during other visits.  He knows a lot of animal names now and had fun pointing at the animals and saying what they were. In fact, throughout the drive up to Montgomery he'd keep saying, "Mom, I want Elephants."

But his interest in animals is still nothing compared to his love of trains.  So when he noticed train tracks and heard a train whistle. he wouldn't be happy until he found that train.

At first I wasn't sure if a train ride was free or not.  Usually it's $3 a ticket and Brandon and I figured we could justify paying for all of us to go on one ride.  But I didn't know if Derrick would understand that we'd only ride it once.  Thankfully the train was included in the free stuff that day.

As you can see Derrick was overjoyed to get to ride on the train.  And I can't believe how grown up he looks in this picture.

The train took us all around the perimeter of the park.  It was a good 10 minute ride, but we really didn't see many of the animals. So when the train ride was over we set out to see more animals.

I was especially impressed by the tigers.  I'd purposefully dressed Derrick in a shirt with a tiger on it.  He's never cared about this shirt before, but while we were looking at the real tigers I showed him the tiger on his shirt.  After that he kept pointing out the "Tiger Shirt" and telling me "tiger at zoo."  He now requests to wear his Tiger Shirt along with his other favorite shirts.

Derrick has loved turtles even longer than he's loved trains.  Turtle was one of his very first words.  So of course he was happy to see turtles swimming in the water. (He could have cared less about the chimpanzees that were on the other side of the water.)

Derrick also saw this rooster walking around and called it a chicken right away.  Seriously I was so impressed by this kids animal vocabulary.  A year ago he couldn't name any farm animals.

There was a free lunch provided by the zoo so we headed over that way and got our free hot dogs, hamburgers, chips, and soda.  I made sure the kids all drank water before I let them have soda.

After lunch we split up for a little bit.  There was a sky ride that went across the whole zoo.  Charlotte and Lydia really wanted to ride it and Brandon was willing to take them.  Personally I hate rides that are high and slow so I was perfectly content to stay down below with Derrick and Veronica.

The ride cost $5 per rider so it was good that all six of us didn't want to go.

Brandon and the girls had a lot of fun on that ride.  They loved going up high over everyone's heads.

They were able to get a great view of lots of the animals.

They went right over the giraffe's area.

Here's Lydia loving the ride.

And Charlotte

You can barely see a cheetah or leopard or something like that laying down under the tree.

The girls wanted me to make sure that I included this picture of animal poop.

All three of them really enjoyed their ride and said it was worth the money.  Brandon said it was the best part of the zoo.

Meanwhile I was busy riding the train with Derrick and Veronica. We went twice while Brandon and the girls were on the sky ride.

Derrick loved going through the two tunnels that were part of the ride.  He'd scream with delight every time we went through them.

Veronica was pretty happy too - even if she doesn't look that excited in these pictures.  She loves everything that Derrick does.  She'd keep asking things like, "Do you like it, Derrick?" and "Have fun train?"

After we met up with Brandon and the girls we went into a little bird area.  We bought a stick with bird seed on it.  (For the ridiculous price of $2) and we could coax the birds onto the stick.  Everyone had fun taking a turn holding a bird. (Oh and I totally have to point out that not only is Charlotte wearing her pumpkin shirt, but she's also wearing pumpkin socks. That girl loves orange and pumpkins and her birthday.)

By this point it was about 1:30 and we'd seen all the animals, but we were determined to stay until the zoo closed at 5:00.  So we headed over to the lion area to watch a little training demonstration.  Derrick wasn't interested in that so we went to see some alligators. 

Then we headed over to the Elephant area to wait for their little demo at 2:30. By this point the kids were loosing steam.  It was nap time and you could tell.  Derrick was flipping out about something so Brandon was working with him while I pulled the wagon with the twins in it and Veronica riding on my shoulders.  Sometimes I really am super mom.  

Eventually we made it over to the elephant area.

There was a cute little dear near there that the girls named Bambi.

Derrick wasn't interested in that either so I took him and Veronica over to look at the turtles/waterfall/chimpanzees.

There were mist sprayers spraying water all throughout the park, but the one in this area sprayed quite a lot of water.  Veronica had a lot of fun playing in the puddle that it made.

When the Elephant keeper talk ended the twins joined us and had fun playing in the mist sprayer.

After that we headed over to the Mann Wildlife Museum.  This is the museum that would have cost us an additional $5.  It was full of large animals on display thanks to taxidermy.

Most of it was interesting, but I don't know if I would have paid extra to see it.

By the end I was referring to it as Taxidermy Ikea because it was felt like a big maze.

But the kids liked it.

We came out of the museum just as the train was going by. The kids were pretty much done with walking so we decided it was time to go ride the train a few times.

Here are all four happy little passengers.

Brandon with the twins.

Me and my train buddy.

We rode the train until they shut it down around 4:00. After that we went to a little playground area.  The kids all had fun with this spider web thing.  Even Derrick liked it.  He even called it a spider.

Around 4:30 the zoo was getting pretty empty and we decided it was about time to start heading out.  So we started going toward the exit.

First though we had to stop at the penny pressing machine.

And then we were all done with the zoo.  It had been a great day. And honestly I think it would be worth paying $63 to come back here sometime.  The only problem is that Derrick would expect unlimited rides on the train.  So the only way we'll ever come back is if we are still at Fort Rucker for the military appreciation day next year.

We started driving home and Derrick and Veronica zonked out pretty fast.  They woke up again after about 45 minutes so we stopped for dinner at Burger King in Troy.  Derrick was pretty excited to have fries.

Then we drove the rest of the way home and put the kids to bed pretty much as soon as we got home.  They all fell asleep really fast.

Brandon and I took care of a few things and then went to bed ourselves. We needed our rest because we were going camping at the beach the next day.