We Went to the Zoo

The weather was fab all last week and as Sunday seemed likely to be the last of it we decided to have a jaunt. 
As an anniversary present I "adopted" a lemur at Whipsnade Zoo for Hubby hehehe and as part of the deal you get a complimentary ticket, It seemed a good day to make use of it.  Obviously, a lot of other people thought it the perfect day to go as the place was really busy - good job it's on such a huge site and able to swallow up the thousands of people who must have been there.
Whipsnade was one of the places I remember visiting with my family when we first moved south - I was always a bit jealous of the people who took their cars in - it seemed the height of decadence to drive around instead of just walking, but my dad was having none of it!  FAR too much money for that carry on!
On Sunday I ticked that little "want" off my to-do list yay!  And yes, it did feel a bit naughty and a bit decadent but it was fun....we bought sandwiches instead of making our own .....and we had ice cream 99's too - oooh definitely a treat-filled day of the not-dad variety. Amd boy, was it hot - so a regular blast from the car's air-con was appreciated!
We still walked miles, as the road doesn't go to all bits of the park, but it was nice to be able to go round and round as often as we wanted, and not to have to lug all the junk and camera lenses on our backs!
I absolutely adored one of the elephant areas - it's where they do the elephant "displays" but on Sunday the elephants were just chilling out and having fun.  The fencing was very minimal, with a couple of keepers just keeping an eye on proceedings - such as heading off Big Mama Elephant when she was being encourages to "ooooh come over here, we won't hurt you" by one daft visitor with small child in tow....well, nooo you might not mean her any harm but she's a few tons of giant mama heffalump and she's heading your way....doh!
There was a baby elephant being bay-sat by his big sister - I admired her patience - you'll see why in the photo below.
Whipsnade has lots of free-running residents with wallabies, muntjack, hares, pheasants etc all happy to muddle along with the human and other animals and the scenery is fabulous with wonderful views over the rest of the Dunstable Downs and Bedfordshire countryside.
 I hope you enjoy seeing the photos!

  

 

 Someone is hitching a ride on the rhino's back!

 

 The penguins have a pool with a view!

 

Thanks for looking