Vacation Day 4: Maryland Zoo at Baltimore

On Tuesday morning we checked out of our hotel and headed over to the Maryland Zoo at Baltimore. Due to Hurricane damage, this was actually the first day it had reopened since Saturday. They still didn't have power, so admission was reduced to $5 and some of the things they normally charge for were free. Apparently, soft serve ice cream is normally free, so it was a huge deal to a lot of locals that all the ice cream had melted and wasn't available due to the power outage. Since 2/3 of our party is lactose intolerant it really didn't affect us much!No power = porto-o-pots at the zoo. Lovely!
The Maryland Zoo is the 3rd oldest in the nation, with Philadelphia being the oldest, and Cincinnati second oldest. Brent and I have been to all three of them! It was a nice zoo, nothing huge, but nice. The layout is strange, the entrance is very far away from animals so you ride a tram up to where the exhibits start. They have a large Africa exhibit with local African animals. The cheetah was asleep right by the window.
The animal she wanted to see the most was the lion - who was asleep at the far end of the cage and you could barely even see him. They had polar bears, giraffes, elephants, penguins and all the basic monkeys and such.

Lilli was excited about the free train ride. It was pretty sad - just a little out and back not even very near the animals. But Lilli loved it and that's all that matters.
In the marshy area they had some turtles and things the kids could climb on. This was more of the "local to Maryland" type animals area.
Lilli and I in the heron nest.
There were a lot of trees down throughout the zoo, and a lot of people working on cleaning up the storm damage. This tree took down the huge swinging rope bridge, so sad.

The petting zoo was also pretty limited. The animals were in their cages and you could just stick your fingers through. The sheep were pretty happy to be hand-fed their own straw though!

All in all, it was a pretty nice zoo, although it was pretty small. They really didn't have all the reptile and other houses most large zoos have and their collection was pretty limited but what they did have was nice and well done. And the $5 admission price couldn't be beat! Even with the power being out in a lot of the zoo, we still got to experience most of it since animals really don't care about electricity!

From there we left Baltimore and headed towards the BEACH!