Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium

Today, as you know, is Veterans' Day, and with my husband being in the military, we can sometimes get some nice perks.

One of those perks today was free admission to Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. We have never been there, and I've been wanting to go. Luckily for us, the weather is also fantastic today. Beautiful blue skies, lots of sun, and a chill in the air which was not at all uncomfortable.

I'm not going to say much about the zoo. It's not the best zoo I've ever been to. It's actually pretty small. But it's in a gorgeous setting. I've never seen a zoo in a prettier area, actually. And it has a couple of fantastic things going for it: the polar bear exhibit and the walruses.

The polar bear exhibit BLEW MY MIND. We got there when the feeding was taking place. You can see the bears both above and below water. One of the bears came up to the glass right next to us, and stuck its paw on the glass. Only a couple panes of thick glass separated us. It was amazing.

The walruses were like that too. We didn't really see them well from above the water, so we went to where we could watch them underwater. And they kept swimming up to the glass on their backs, and then flipping over against the glass and swimming up to the top of the water. It was really cool.

I also liked the aquarium quite a bit - particularly the seahorse exhibit.

Lance and I both enjoyed our trip to the zoo today. It only took a couple hours to get through everything, so we were done by noon. We stopped at a few other places in the vicinity: Owen Beach and Fort Nisqually (which is a museum, so we didn't go in, but you can see parts of the fort from outside). And then we headed back toward home, stopping at Applebee's (free entrees for active duty and veterans!) for lunch on the way.

Without further ado...
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