Zoo with a View

On our first full day in Palm Springs, we checked out the new-to-us Living Desert Zoo and Gardens.  Lots of people have been asking about the heat and I'd say it definitely was hot-- 90ish degrees every day.  We'll easily get this kind of heat here in the Central Valley, but this was our first experience with it this summer, and everything we did was outside and involved hiking, so it did zap our energy quickly.  The perk to going to the desert in the hot summer was that it seemed to be their off season!  Either that, or by sneaking into the last week of May, no one was off school yet.  We had our resort and both parks we spent days at pretty much to ourselves.

The upside to being nearly the only ones at a zoo on a hot day was that when we went to the giraffe feeding exhibit, we seemed to get a little extra attention.  The zookeepers were happy to let us hang out and they took a lot of pictures for us!  When the giraffes weren't looking at the camera, they gave us more leaves to feed and lure them! 

We are never too old for a petting zoo-- especially one with affectionate little goats!

This was a really unique zoo.  The animals were specific to desert regions of the world, so we saw some new ones.  We also had to laugh at some of these critters looking totally hot and pooped out, like this poor meercat above!

This was a cool "exhibit" too.  It's Bighorn Sheep and it seemed the zoo just put a fence around a rocky mountain that was already a natural part of their grounds!  If you open it bigger, you can try to find about a half dozen of these camouflage creatures.  The next day, when we went to a nearby national park, Bighorn Sheep were supposedly some of the common wildlife you could see, but we never sighted any.

In the reptile house we learned what snakes and lizards to keep our eyes open for as we hiked around in the Mojave.  Again, no rattlesnake or chuckwalla sightings-- even though they're pretty common!  (Phew!)

One of the best parts of this zoo was the gorgeous grounds.  Plants unlike any we've seen in a zoo before encased each path.  Cactus gardens were aplenty.  And the whole place was framed with those beautiful desert mountain views.  There were several miles of hiking trails we could have explored too, but we just got too hot and tired.  I think we appreciated the beauty adequately without dehydrating or heat exhausting our net-yet-used-to-summer, wimpy selves! ;)