San Diego Zoo

For a photographer like my wife, the San Diego Zoo is a must-see. We came prepared to take a lot of pictures. I brought my laptop so that we could offload pictures from the memory cards if she ran out. That was a mostly useless exercise. Part of the problem is that we are used to wildlife refuges, rather than zoos.

There are a zillion animals there at the ‘world famous San Diego Zoo’, but many of them were in photographically unfavorable positions. The aviaries where birds fly freely had the problem that everything was lit in spotty light, with sunlight filtering through the leaves. And many of the larger animals, like the polar bears and the hippos were behind glass — scratched up distorted glass at that.

Still, the underwater viewing areas aren’t something you can easily duplicate in the wild and we got some great views of the hippo. Being from Hutto, Texas, home of the only highschool with Hippos as the team mascot, that was one of our favorite spots.

But then, there were other times when the animals came right out in plain sight. Now I personally don’t think this Great Blue Heron is a zoo resident. I just think that he likes the environment and dropped in — right where Mary Ann couldn’t get a good shot of him.

But we came back to the RV, tired and sore, and with lots of pictures. And I had the uncontrollable urge to pull Jurassic Park up on the media player and watch it.