Santa Barbara Zoo Sleepover

This is Sam posting about one of the Cub Scout outings we went on in mid-October of 2022. This was one that the boys were very excited about - a sleepover at the Santa Barbara Zoo! Although the pack ended up meeting early for a hike on Saturday morning, I had to see some patients in the morning, so we headed off in the afternoon and met up with the pack for a cute little diner that was right on the beach. 

Elijah and his best friend Christian. They love climbing trees. The restaurant owners weren't so fond of them climbing trees....

They had a great sand pit at the restaurant

Joseph decided to not join the cub scouts, so he gets to join in on the pack meeting activities without having to worry about fulfilling all the cub scout requirements. Lucky dude!

Silly as ever

We bought milk shakes after eating our huge cheeseburgers.... Probably ate way too much

Nice beach in the background shot

This is when Joseph was obsessed with chihuahuas. This little guy joined us for the outing

Finally made it into the zoo!

River of lights with animals, getting ready for Christmas already. The kids especially liked this axolotl.

 

 

After lugging our things around the zoo in our beach wagon, we finally made it to the campsite - a big grassy field near the lions and giraffes.

Here's the tent we bought for cheap on Amazon. We left all of our camping things in Texas when we moved to California... Should have known that it would come in handy!

Inside our tent. As you can see, Christian decided to join us. He was jealous that we had a 3-man tent while he and his dad had to share a 1-man tent. 
 

Our kids are definitely getting better at sleeping in tents and sleeping bags then they were when we lived in Texas!

One of the favorite activities of the evening - running around like wild animals

Ready for a guided night time zoo tour!

This lion was especially active - she kept jumping up at the barrier like she wanted to give us a hug

That goat seemed to be having a fun night

A lot of the animals were sleeping

Joseph was also very into cockatoos at this time, and he thought it was great that this one could talk

As part of the zoo tour, we also had a few animal interactions. The first one was a cute little lizard that could puff out its belly. Our boys enjoyed answering the questions that they posed about animals

After the night time zoo tour, it was lights out! We crawled into tent, read a chapter in the Book of Mormon, said a prayer, and tried to sleep. After about an hour in the tent, I heard someone trying to enter. Look who it was!

No, I'm not talking about Mario Bear. It's Christian!

This ended up being our sleeping arrangement until the morning. Haha!

The next morning, we packed up our things and got ready to leave the zoo. We had free admission for that day, so I thought that we might as well see a few of the exhibits now that it was day time. Little did I know that our trip also included a second guided tour - this time during the day!

Good bye tents, until next time! I think ours was one of the first packed away.

Saw this beauty as we were walking to breakfast

Yummy breakfast in the zoo before the zoo officially opened

Checking out the gift shop

Having fun on a giant spider's web before our daytime guided tour started

Had to get some good frog shots! I think it would be fun to get some different types of poison dart frogs and house them together like this, but supposedly that's not the best for them...

Kangaroo!

They had an open field Australia exhibit

Rolling down a big turf hill!

Now time for a train ride

Waiting for the last animal encounter of our visit

Look at this beautiful hawk!

The lions were definitely sleepier during the day than the night before

Back in the Australia area

Overall, I think that the boys and I had a great time at this overnight zoo campout. One of the doctors I work with told me this past week that they went on the same campout recently and had a totally different experience. The zoo had forgotten to turn off the sprinklers (that's a great wakeup call!) and there were no animal encounters. I guess I'm glad that we went when we did! I'm not sure whether we'll be continuing with cub scouts when we return to San Antonio, but at least it's been a fun adventure this school year.