Time for another family outing. I picked-up my Mom, drove to my sister Diane's house again, and this time we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo. I haven't ben there in at least 20 years. It's a "quaint" zoo. It's really not as big as people think. We had lunch first at Café Brauer and watched the paddleboats on the lagoon. There were a lot of kids in the zoo, mostly from day camps and other organized summer programs. It seemed that anywhere we went, either we couldn't find any of the "larger" animals. They were either all sleeping, or they were just "somewhere else" (they weren't inside a building or outside a building). We went to see the seals - I think there were two. I somehow remember a lot more seals. What's the deal? Now, to be fair, half of the Great Apes were shipped out to do a staged rehab of their enclosures, and all of the elephants, rhinos, and giraffes are gone because they are rehabbing/building a new Regenstein African Journey, and the Farm-in-the-Zoo is all torn up and being rebuilt, so I guess there wasn't a lot to see. While outside the tiger exhibit, I saw some kids playing around one of those 25-cent telescope things that you can use to get close-up views of the big cats. Well, I thought I'd try it and sure enough - it worked! You can use those telescopes with your digital camera! Just Put the camera up to the telescope and zoom in (optical zoom, not digital zoom) and shoot! Cool. I'll have to remember this.

The most entertaining part of the day was watching the polar bears. There was an underwater observations area with a bunch of windows so you can watch the bears swim. There was one bear that was always swimming around the glass. Diane and I were watching him, because he was very active, constantly swimming around. We noticed that he was really looking at some of the people. Then we realized that he was really looking at the children and just passing by the adults. He would even stop and size-up the kids. I even saw him lick the glass by one girl's leg! That's when we realized he thought the kids were seal pups! He was sizing them up as prey! It was, um, entertaining. It was a nice day and we were at the zoo for hours. It was nice being out and walking in the sunshine and looking at the animals. A nice day.