Day 29

Today, among other things, I took a quick trip to the Desert Botanical Garden next door to the zoo. Since I work at the zoo, I get reciprocal admission to a number of places, including the Garden. I took a bunch of pictures, and here are a few!

 Now, that free admission doesn't generally include extras at the places I can get in to. One of those extras would be the butterfly garden at the DBG; but for some reason, today when I presented my card, I got a butterfly sticker which got me into the butterfly garden. It was great!

 I love when the cactus bloom!

Day 15

I went to see This Means War today with a friend from PetCo. Pretty good movie, attractive men, always a good time. When I pulled into my parking space, I saw the following on the base of a street lamp. I don't think any additional exploitation is needed.

Sometimes I have friends

I have one friend outside of either of my jobs. Her name is Nikki and you met her a few posts back.

A few weeks ago, we went for a drive and ended up at Fossil Creek Creamery. My love of goat cheese started that day. Obviously all the cheese I got from there is now long gone, eaten with delicious crackers. Well she went there a few days ago and got more cheese, so we are going to have a wine and cheese and movie night. I'm excited! I'm going to go have an adult evening with a friend I made as an adult!

Aaannd Theeeeenn

After mom and I spent, what, 2 days? in Chicago; she LEFT ME!! ("He left us, he left us!"  "But that's not what I'm gonna do!" name that movie!) All ALONE!!! In the big city of CHICAGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! To wait for Lindsey to come pick me up! :)

We had already checked out of the hotel (because those crazy places make you leave my like 11am, in what universe are people awake by 11am on their vacations? ...Oh yeah, this one.) The hotel people were nice enough to let me leave my baggage in the storage area so I didn't have to lug it around while exploring on my own and waiting for my ride. With just my purse and my jump on/jump off bus card, I took mom to the train station, cried a little, and rode the bus all by myself (look mom, I'm a Big Girl Now!) around the city till I decided what I would do. Unsurprisingly, I decided to go to the Lincoln Park Zoo.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say that Chicago has one of the nicest bus systems I've ever had the pleasure to navigate. I didn't use the L-train while I was there, but the buses are fantastic.

For those of you not in the know, the Lincoln Park Zoo is in Lincoln Park in Chicago just north of the Miracle Mile. It is huge and free to get in and parts of it are coaxingly nice, and I think that other parts will catch up eventually. I had my camera (when do I not) and took pics. I even recorded a bit of video of my talking to/for the animals like mom and I do so I could show her later when I go home. Yes, mom and I are those people.

They have a fantastic ape house with chimps and gorillas. I tried not to use my flash, so most of my pics from in there ended up blurry.

The big cat house needs some serious work, but they have lots of different cats, which I LOVE!

He's in a box! Like a house cat!

This tiger was so cute, it was like he was posing!

After I shot these, I took the bus back to Miracle Mile and found a place to sit and have a coffee while Lindsey was fighting traffic into the city. After she made it, we drove back out to the zoo and looked around for a bit since she had never been there before. While we were in the cat house, the male lion started roaring. He walked into his outside exhibit and continued while we watched (and while I filmed it). It was awesome! I love lion roars!

He tired himself out with all that effort and had to take a nice nap!

 After the zoo closed, Linds and I took the bus back into the city (it's a few blocks) while leaving her car since we found a free parking spot next to the zoo. We were going to go eat at this one place, possibly pizza, but we were starving! and the wait was like an hour, while standing outside in the COLD! So we went to the Hard Rock and ate.

After dinner was the long drive to Peoria, where Linds lives. The next day, we went to another zoo!!!

Chicago and the Field Museum

On out second day in Chicago, mom and I were going to get ourselves out to the Brookfield Zoo, but it was cold and Brookfield is kinda out there so we decided to go to the Field Museum, a natural history museum. It was a great idea! That place is HUGE! There is no way you could get around it in one day. We saw all kinds of stuff. My favorite part were all the life sized dioramas. That trip is now going to be illustrated in photographs.

Michael Jackson was apparently around in the old Egyptian days!

 I had more I wanted to put on here, but the vertical shot ones uploaded horizontal. :(

Chicago

A while ago, before I moved this godforsaken place, Mom and I took another trip to Chicago. This was partially and mom/daughter trip, and partially getting me to Chicago so my friend in Peoria IL could come pick me up and we could hang for a few days. I have known this girl since I was 16. She worked at my first job, but you'll hear more about her later when I write about when she came to visit me here. This post is about mom and me.

We went to the Hard Rock for dinner the first night we were there. It was a busy evening, and there were a lot of people that out waitress was taking care of, but the service didn't seem bad to us. When we were near finishing our dinner, the manager on duty came up to us with a dessert tray and asked us to pick dessert as an apology for poor service. Well, as stated above, we thought the service was fine, but since there were a lot of needy/roudy teenaged people in our section that were taking a lot of our waitress' time, I guess she felt we were jipped. So we decided on two of the dessert shooters. They were delicious!

Goldfield

I had the day off Tuesday, and so did my friend Nikki, so we decided to take a little trip. I had found this ghost town online that was only like 35min from here called Goldfield Ghost Town. It's this little tourist trap kind of place. The guy who built it did so in an area near the Superstition Mountains where a lot of people had discovered gold in the rush. He built very near the original town site, but most of the town an disappeared years before. All the buildings are built to look like they're from the early-mid 1800's.

There's a narrow gauge train that takes you on a circuit around the town and the conductor tells you all about the area and why this was built, etc etc. Since it was summer, the reptile house that I really wanted to see was closed for the season. I'll  have to come back in the winter. There's also a mine tour and a mystery house. We didn't do either of those things. We wandered around and looked at the shops.

Nikki and I in front of the train.

Hurry Up Ernie giving the tour.

Goldfield from the train.

This was just cool.

Superstition Mountains

After we left we went to see this housing complex that Nikki is thinking of getting a house in. Looking at that house made me want a house. I am tired of renting, but I also don't want to buy a house and have that keeping me here. I want to leave Arizona in a few years and don't want to have to sell a house.

After that adventure we went to Sweet Tomatoes for a late lunch, vegged out at my place for a while, and then parted ways. I then took a short nap, and watched 8 episodes of Criminal Minds. It was a good day off!

Outside the Bordello in a Go-Go dancer cage

Took this pick just for mom!

                                                                      We're in elevators!