The Tidepools and The Zoo

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the morning on a beach at the "high" low tide. "Low" low tide is better, but that happens in the evening, after the sun has set. So this was the best we could do. I didn't get a lot of great shots since everything was still covered by water, but I got a few. Like this one of a sea anemone.




Or this one of an empty chiton (I pocketed the shell):



Between the first and the second pictures, I managed to get soaked. The tide was rolling in high waves, and I thought maybe just my feet would get wet. Silly me. As I was bending down to take a picture, a wave came up and assaulted the back of my legs, all the way up to my knees. Luckily, it did not hit my camera. However, my pants were wet, as well as my socks and shoes. I stupidly only brought extra shoes with me. Although, the water wasn't as cold as I expected, my feet end up as ice blocks by lunch time. Since I am staying with such wonderful friends, they understood my imperative need to go out and buy dry clothing. We headed to some mall, where I bought these awesome light gray cords at The Gap. I do not usually go to The Gap, but this totally worked out in my favor. I also got a 3-pack of nice grey, purple and yellow knee-socks. Both these items went great with the purple suede One Stars I had in the car with me. Score.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at the zoo
. Of course I had taken so many pictures at the beach, I didn't have much room left on my card for the zoo. Frijole saved the day by letting me use her camera. Here are some photos from that shoot:

Look! A dik-dik (supposedly they sleep with their eyes open, which would explain why this one didn't move at all)!



This here is a gorilla. He sat in profile most of the time, but then Frijole said something to Fink-Nottle, about "how it kind of looks like gorillas sit around all day and don't do much." The gorilla totally HEARD her:



Here's the one-year-old baby gorilla, doing a classic gorilla pose:



Here's a young giraffe stripping a tree of leaves:



I have no idea what this is, but it is so lovely:



Here are some river otters frolicking (it seems that they should be EVERY WHERE, but I have never seen them in any rivers):



No lions ate us today--for extra protection, they put up these heavy plastic windows, that various hooligans have already defaced, but I managed to get a half-way good picture of them through the plexi:



We heart penguins:



This is a rhino, who seems to have rubbed off his central horn. Poor fella:



There were a lot of other fun animals, but I feel this gives you a good idea of the fun we had. I spent a good portion of time making fun on Fink-Nottle for being so tired, and then I pass out on the couch before 10pm. We were watching House, and I made it about 3/4 of the way through, and announced I was tired, and out I went. I'm pretty sure Fink-Nottle was up way past 10pm.