Lions, Tigers, and Bears

Day two in Chicago: featuring the Lincoln Park Zoo. For the rest of this trip, my brother would be busy with work, leaving my mother and I to explore Chicago on our own. We took the train to Fullerton and walked the rest of the way to the zoo. At the zoo, we saw a variety of fascinating things, including trees, grass, benches, clouds, and signs. Also a seagull, because that’s what you really go to the zoo to see.

[If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kind of that person. You know, the one who goes to the art museum to see a Van Gogh and spends more time taking pictures of the floor tiles. My favorite reasons for doing things are, in no particular order, 1) for the heck of it, 2) because I was told not to/to prove a point, and 3) to drive everyone around me crazy. I once ate a single potato chip precisely because the bag bet that I couldn’t eat just one (reason 2). I’m currently watching the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in chronological order just because I want to see Avengers: Infinity War (reason 1). While playing Codenames¹ the other week, I tried convincing the other team to pick washer no matter what their clue was (reason 3). Death? Washers are dangerous, and you wouldn’t want to get stuck in one. Gravity? Gravity is a force, and washers have a lot of centripetal force. And so on and so forth.]

Amazing.  What diversity of wildlife.

And we also saw some animals. They were okay, I guess.

Seriously, though, for a free zoo in the middle of a major city, the Lincoln Park Zoo has a surprising variety of animals and the zoo is well-organized, even with 347 different school groups running all over the place. They have indoor and outdoor exhibits featuring land animals, apes, primates, birds, fish, and mosquitoes. The last are native to Chicago and ensure you have a fully immersive and tactile experience. The size of the zoo means that you can see everything in a few hours. We ended up having lunch there, which was standard museum-style food at a reasonable price.

While we were there, most of the animals were out/active. The kangaroos were lying on the ground looking very unkangaroolike, some of the apes kept hiding in the corner to avoid people, and the polar bears were nowhere to be seen, but we saw almost everything else. I enjoyed the small mammal-reptile house and the bird house. You get a high species to area ratio. If you have at least 2-3 days in Chicago, I would recommend the zoo, especially if you don’t like museums. It was free (my favorite price), I hadn’t been to the zoo in years, and they had penguins, so I left happy.

Some of the animals we saw - Clockwise from top left: rhino, zebra,

flamingos, giraffes, and penguins

On the way back to the train, we stopped by the Lincoln Park Conservatory. I’ve previously demonstrated my extensive knowledge of flowers and plants that aren’t native to New England (see two posts previous), so this was a quick stop, but it’s also free, so worth it if you have an extra half hour. By the time we got back to the vicinity of the Chicago River, we still had time for the river architecture cruise. Multiple people I have talked to say they really like this activity, but it was not my favorite. I liked it, and we heard some interesting stories about the buildings along the river; however, I still prefer museums where I can walk through at my own pace and read about the parts that I think are interesting (see next two posts) or hikes (because dirt, and trees, and sky). Based on other peoples’ opinions, I’d still recommend it, though I probably won’t do it again any time soon. Even after the zoo, conservatory, and architecture tour, we still got back to my brother’s condo with time for me to get some research done. Pros of computational research. Or a con? Wait a second . . .

Here is a plant we saw at the conservatory.

Here is the Chicago skyline as seen from the architecture cruise.

¹Codenames is played with two teams and a grid of words. Each team has a Spymaster who knows which words belong to their team. The Spymasters take turns giving clues to their team to try and get their teammates to pick the words that are theirs.