On the Go: Around Town: Zoo Snooze

Colin's 4th grade teachers won a grant from the local education foundation . . . the grant entitled every 4th grade student (about 100 kids) to an overnight field trip to the Cameron Park Zoo. Since they needed a lot of parent volunteers, I signed up. I mean why not? I am not a big fan of zoos, but we are an adventurous duo so this will be super easy! Now, I have planned overnight field trips as a teacher but never participated as a parent so this will be interesting for me. Oh you soooo know I will be making mental notes of what is going wrong (and right) the entire trip. A few weeks before the trip I attended the chaperone's meeting. We went over the rules and what we would be doing and I asked about six questions while hardly anyone else asked any questions. I also found out our group would be sleeping outside under a pavilion in the middle of the zoo. Hmmmmm, I wonder if our sleeping assignments had anything to do with my questioning of grading policy during the year? LOL Actually, I was looking forward to being outside as the temperatures were to be in the upper 40s! So I packed . . . this sure seems like a lot of stuff for one night . . .

. . . oh did I mention we had air mattresses to sleep on? Oh yes they recommended it and thought they knew best! Here is most of the gang ready to enter the zoo . . .

. . . this is where we will be sleeping . . .

We made our beds and headed out for a night time behind the scenes tour of the zoo. It was good and the one thing they seemed to say often was about how a lot of the animals in the zoo were rescued from pet owners that were not responsible. I like that but it was sad too. We went behind the scenes to see how the animals live and are taken care of . . .

. . . I wasn't so thrilled about this part of the tour! This turtle wins the weirdest critter award . . .

It was late by the time we got back to our 'beds' . . . don't we look soooo excited?

. . . and we match! Of course that was so not planned! The kids were asleep in no time! I on the other hand tossed and turned and looked around and listened and finally fell asleep around 2am. The next thing I remember is two eyes looking at me. It was Liz in our group who needed to go to the restroom . . .two other girls saw us and got up to go with us. It was before 6 and by the time we got bac the rest of the crew was up and packing up. I am already looking forward to a nap and a super long extra hot shower! Of course, we still had more touring to do and animals to see . . .