The Amazing Omaha Zoo

Before we went to St. Louis Nate and I took a trip to Omaha (yes, we are all about visiting mid-western cities). This was our end-of-summer trip before I went back to school. In all of these picture we are at the Henry Dorley Zoo, which just might be the coolest zoo in the country, and I've been enumerating its wonders ever since we got back.

In this first picture, Nate and I are standing in the horribly long line waiting to get into the zoo. The long wait was not a waste because we had a nice chat with the group behind us in line. They happened to be from Overland Park too, and they were at the zoo with their grandsons. They were kind enough (understatement - they were from Kansas the niceness capital of the world) to take this lovely picture.















The Omaha zoo has a huge collection of cats. Here I am being watched by a lioness.




















The zoo had a really great penguin exhibit with many species of penguins. They had Little Blue Penguins from New Zealand and Blackfoot Penguins from Africa, but the best was the large exhibit of Arctic penguins. The penguins featured in this picture are King Penguins. They are the second largest penguins; only the Emperor Penguin is larger. (FYI: After watching the penguin movie I became a little too curious about penguins. I was rumored to have been looking up websites about them in my spare time.)















The zoo also has a pretty cool aquarium. Here I am with all the jellies.




















The Henry Dorley Zoo has the largest indoor rainforest in North America. It's divided into Asian, African, and South American sections. Here I am in front of a waterfall. Props to Nate for taking such a nice picture. We saw a lot of animals in the rainforest, but I decided not to include the picture of the sloth.

Our favorite part of the zoo was the Nocturnal Exhibit, where it was too dark to take pictures. The animals' day and night cycles are reversed so all the animals are active during the day. We saw lots of bats, a bunch of wallabies, and tons of alligators. Also, we never knew that beavers could be so cool.

If any of you are interested I'm ready for another visit.