Jacksonville Zoo (Day 1)

Mike and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary at the end of March. We didn't get to do much since it was his finals week but back in February we had planned a special trip for us to celebrate during his Spring break. We finally decided on Florida since Mike had never been there and since we're moving West at the end of the year, this would probably be the last chance to go to Florida for a while. We decided to go to Jacksonville but we would also spend a day in Orlando and in St. Augustine. We were super excited.

The day before we drove down to Charleston and we dropped Daniel off with my parents. Little Dan was going to get 5 days to spend with his grandma and papa without us. We left really early Monday morning and I felt a little bad about leaving Daniel but that only lasted for about 15 minutes or so and then I was fine :)

Our first stop was the Jacksonville Zoo. If you know us at all then you know that we like to find the zoo wherever we are and go see it. I had been to this one before but Mike was surprised at how big it was. We got there early enough that it wasn't too crowded or hot yet so most of the animals were out. It was cold when we left South Carolina so we still had our coats on (silly us...we thought we would need coats). This was the first and last picture we took wearing jackets!

One of my favorites :)

 Mike loves the alligators! He wants to see them in the wild...I'm perfectly happy viewing them from a distance and behind a barrier. 

Our next stop was to see the black bear and the monkeys. I'm not a huge fan of monkeys but the baby gorillas were cute.

 This is the titanboa statue. We called it the basilisk since I think it looks like the snake from Harry Potter. It moved and hissed...creepy.

The gardens in the Asia section of the zoo were beautiful. Seeing the tigers reminded me of how much I want a pet tiger :)

We saw lots and lots of animals.

We had a great time at the zoo! It amazes me that we are able to have so much fun seeing the same animals we have seen a million times before but its still exciting and we still enjoy it or maybe we just enjoy spending time together? :)