Since we didn't have to check out until noon and there was no reason to rush home, we played at the water park at the Ramada Tropics in Des Moines for 2 more hours. This water park was perfect for N2 because they could do pretty much everything. There was a large 1 ft deep pool that had a pirate ship. They could climb up into the pirate ship and there were 4 water slides they could go down. There were also sprinklers off the pirate ship but you could easily go around them. There was also a smaller slide in the corner of the same pool. There were 2 fairly gentle water slides that N2 could not go down by themselves but they could ride with us. We went on these slides over and over again. There were 2 smaller pools that didn't get deeper than 4 feet that N2 could practice their swimming skills. There wasn't much for adults or teenagers to do but ages 2-6 or 7 would highly enjoy this water park! I kept thinking that it would so much fun to have Megan and Amelia along with us at this water park!
Pardon the look with the goggles. We bought them for N2 the night before because Noah complains about water in his eyes a little and I think he wants to go under water more than he does. They were really excited to wear their goggles. They took them off after about 30 minutes (right after I put my camera away).
Here they are going down the big slide with Brian. Brian went quite a bit slower than I did and the only thing we could think of was the different fabric of our swimsuits???
In the shallow pool with the pirate ship, N2 loved the crawl or walk on their hands around the whole pool rather than walk around it. I think it seemed more like swimming to them.
We left to drive home. We knew there was a zoo open in the Quad Cities (Brian researched after his failed attempt at taking Natalie somewhere fun on the first day of our trip) so when we got there and no one was sleeping and it seemed like everyone needed a break, we visited the Niabi Zoo. This was such a nice, small zoo! It is the only zoo in Illinois with elephants!
They had a giraffe that was just 2 months old!
Noah really wanted to see the wolf since we missed out the wolf at the Safari park. I was impressed that the wolf was moving around and not just sleeping!
N2 had to make wolf faces and here they are. Not sure why these are wolf faces.
I was excited to see what looked like mountain goats or ibexes. Brookfield Zoo used to have tons of ibexes and I have no idea what happened to them. I haven't seen mountain goats in any other zoo. I really wanted them to be ibexes for the letter I in my book. Alas, these were Barbary Sheep. What was funny was that a zookeeper had just entered their cage and was going to use the weedwhacker. I have no idea why you would need to cut the weeds. Wouldn't the sheep just eat the weeds?? The sheep were so scared of the weedwhacker that they all jumped off their "mountain" and hid.
There was a children's zoo and N2 came face to face with a llama and goats!
That was about the end of our trip! We visited 4 zoos in the 7 days! That's a lot of animals!
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