Seattle City Pass, Day 2 (with pictures!)

Today [original date of posting: 14th December] was our second touristy day using the Seattle City Pass.

Attraction #3: the Woodland Park Zoo.


We took an early morning bus to a local park-and-ride, where we would transfer to a commuter bus to the city.

Kara waiting at Ash Way Park'n'Ride.

Like Queensland's "Go Cards", an ORCA is an easier alternative to carrying lots of $1 notes and 25c coins around.

I like zoos. It's sort of a tradition in my family to visit zoos when we're being tourists overseas. I've been to the following:

Australia: Taronga Park Zoo (as a kid, don't remember it), Melbourne Zoo (ditto), Australia Zoo
Ghana: Accra Zoo, Kumasi Zoo
UK: London Zoo, Edinburgh Zoo
US: San Diego Zoo, Woodland Park Zoo

Nowadays, zoos aren't the stereotypical cages, bars and things like you see in the movie "Madagascar". Most zoos (in developed nations at least) have well-designed, natural-looking enclosures and environments for their animals. And the majority of species are being kept for breeding purposes, future reintroduction to the wild, and behavioural research. Edinburgh Zoo has no African lions anymore, only the Asian subspecies as they are endangered.

Woodland Park Zoo is deceptive in size. It doesn't look like it takes up a whole lot on the map, but its winding paths lead you to a wide array of endangered and threatened species. My favourites are the African Wild Dogs, aka Cape Hunting Dog, aka Lycaon pictus. While other wild canines have plainer colouring, the African Wild Dogs have a cool patchwork thing going on.

I've been put off time and again in actually publishing this post. So I'm not going to track down all my pictures, upload them here, and type captions. I've already done that on Facebook the night we got back from the zoo.

So instead, here's a link to the pictures.