Living Desert Zoo

After our rock climbing adventures with Uncle David and Aunt Linda in Joshua Tree, the twins and Jake spent the day at the Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert. Upon arriving, Jake noticed some golf carts roaming around the zoo and asked how he could get one of those to tour the park. There were no tour guides available, but, apparently, it wasn’t busy that day, because the front desk called Gail, a volunteer zoo guide, at her house to come and give Jake and the girls a tour in one of the golf carts.

Even though it was her day off, I guess she loves giving people tours because she was excited to take the girls around! Apparently, she spends her winters in Palm Springs (it was her last day in town that day) and her summers in Alaska. Must be nice! Gail doesn’t have any grandkids of her own and basically adopted the twins for a day. She took them around with Jake on the golf cart well past the amount of time she normally gives tours, took pictures for them, and was so happy when Jake texted her a few pictures from their day. Thanks for the VIP tour, Gail!

Riding in style. Jake said the look on people’s hot, sweaty and tired faces was priceless as they zoomed around and were able to cut in some of the longer lines for activities like giraffe feeding.

Giraffe feeding at this zoo was only $5– compared to $80+ at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (we’ve never done it there).

Poor goats had no where to escape from the twins.

I feel for you, Goat. You look the same way I do when I’m trying to sleep and there’s one or two three-year-olds directly in my face.

MUST. GET. CLOSER.

Some boys observe the crazy wild animals in the spider web.

At one point, Jake had taken the girls to the bathroom, when all of a sudden, he turned around just in time to see them giggling and running off with a “Caution: Wet” sign from the bathroom. He raced out the bathroom door, but they were no where to be found! The girls usually stick really close to us in public (like hanging on to our legs close) and have never run away like that, so you can imagine Jake’s shock.

Jake and Gail ran every direction for five minutes, yelling and searching everywhere for the girls, who had completely vanished. Jake said his heart was racing, but he managed to stay calm, while Gail was a complete basket case, frantically calling on her walkie talkie to have all the exits of the zoo shut down.

After a five-minute frantic search, Jake happened to hear one of the girls far off saying, “Where’s Daddy?” and finally tracked them down. Jake showed me on a zoo map where they had taken off to and I have no idea how they managed to run that far away in such a short amount of time. Just hearing about the fiasco gave me a heart attack. From now on, I guess we’ll be having discussions about not running away and what to do if they get lost.