NOT Tiny Tuesday ...

... Seeing double at the Philadelphia Zoo. 

As I mentioned yesterday we had a big day planned for today ... which involved a trip to Philadelphia.  We have been talking about visiting America's Oldest Zoo ... which is the Philadelphia Zoo  ... for a little while now.  And with today's weather being absolutely perfect we decided that today was the day to go.  We had all sunshine and lovely early spring temps in the high 60's.  

And aside from all the traffic issues we had a fantastic time.  The drive there should have taken us one hour 15 minutes but ended up being almost 2 hours ... very frustrating.  The trip home was a little better but still took longer than Google Maps predicted.  The trip home was made even more exciting by a rather large wildfire that we passed along the way.  But we were lucky to be able to get by that without too much of a delay.

The Philly Zoo is much larger than your little one here in the Lehigh Valley ... but that doesn't mean it's any better IMHO.  They certainly have a larger variety of animals ... but the enclosures are very different.  With a lot of them you are either shooting (looking) through thick (plexi)glass or wiring.  Most of the Lehigh Valley Zoo's enclosures are more open ... without having to shoot through glass or wire caging.  

I would have to say that my favorite part of the zoo was the Reptile and Amphibian house ... although the lighting in here was awful.  My main photo (my favorite from the day) is of an Eastern collared lizard ... with another one slightly behind him/her.  As you can image I took lots of pictures so I've added a collage into Extras.  I will identify each species in the tags ... starting clockwise from upper left corner.  Sadly, there were a lot of animals that weren't out on exhibit ... either because of the avian flu or their enclosures were under construction (being improved).  

Please have a look full screen.

We were at the zoo for about 3 hours total and even with travel time we were home by supper.