As always, Dog is my co-pilot...Cedar was on duty, patrolling the property, keeping our home safe from all manners of beasts, but Penny would have had a hard time in her crate all day, so she came along...this gave us a good excuse for frequent stops to walk the Penny-monster...
Ben passed some of the drive watching a movie on my I-pod...it's a beautiful drive through some empty and wild country, but the snowstorm cut down on the pretty in some ways...
We got to Fort Drum in great time (not much traffic on the quietest road in Upstate NY when you head out before 7am), loaded the boxes into (and on top of) my Element...the guy working in the surplus-yard couldn't believe how much room my toaster-like car has...
The snow picked up to near white-out conditions for a bit, but we pushed on South to Syracuse, hoping for tropical weather...or at least less sliding and windiness (with some of the boxes on my roof, it felt as though we had a sail on top of the Element...
Our first stop in Syracuse was the Rosamond Gifford Zoo at Burnet Park, it's a great zoo with lots of great animals both inside and out...Ben loves aquarium exhibits because of the variety and colors of tiny beasties inside the tanks...
His favorite exhibit and animals of the entire zoo were the naked mole rats, maybe the coolest animals on the planet...
We checked out the sloths, which were, shockingly, sleeping...I don't know why I was surprised, but the young sloths were also slothful...
One of the cool features of the animal exhibits at this zoo is the closeness of some of the animals to visitors, specifically the lions...we spent some time talking to this lion, who responded by patting and licking the glass next to Ben (Ben insisted that it was because the lion liked him, I thought that he looked hungry, but kept my own council)...at one point, the lion jumped up on the glass, and it shook/rattled exactly like our sliding glass doors when Cedar wants to eat a squirrel on the deck...the docent hanging out and talking with us assured us that the lions had never "yet" escaped or broken through the glass...
Maybe the best part of our trip to the zoo was the outside trail to various animals living outside...the weather had cleared, and we were almost the only people brave/tough enough to walk around outside...
The penguins seemed lonely, and were ecstatic to play with Ben for a couple of minutes...
One of the few people we saw while touring the the outside exhibits was this multi-pinked princess, who fruitlessly tried to horn in on Ben's playdate with the penguins...
Here's the zoo map, in case you were interested, I had originally thought of going to the zoo in Watertown, which is nearer to Fort Drum...but I read some unflattering reviews, and their collection is much less impressive...our next target zoo in our part of NY is the one in Utica...probably in the Spring...
Ben doing his impression of a Collared Peccary...the actual peccary was a grumpy and sluggish little guy who sat looking at us in exactly the same way that Cedar does when he thinks that we're being stupid...
After the zoo, I had to make a drive-by assault on Dinosaur Barbecue, a favorite eatery of mine since Gail and I were at Syracuse for our graduate studies...
Our next stop was the Carousel Center, where we had some more food and shopping and rode on the namesake carousel before watching...
Madagascar 2, a fun movie that Ben and I had been excited to see for awhile...
With 4 big metal boxes on the roof, it wasn't any trouble finding the Element...I may leave them on forever for just this reason...we headed back up North and into the snow-globe...before we reached Watertown it was snowing, and it kept coming down, thick and heavy during the whole drive...
at some points, I couldn't see the road except as the flattest white space in front of me...there were no other cars (or plows, for that matter), and since both Ben and Penny were snoring and sleeping hard I didn't listen to my audiobook...I drove slowly and surprised/scared a Stewart's employee in Star Lake who apparently didn't expect anyone to stop in during her shift, but was happy to sell me a big coffee to keep me going through the white stuff...
After a double-shift in the cold, Cedar was happy to see us, and spent a snuggly night under the covers...Penny slept draped across/over both of us...
This morning, Ben was eager to assemble the 3D puzzle that we bought in the gift shop at the zoo yesterday...he also enjoyed some daddy-made yogurt (my homemade stuff ends up thinner than store-bought, hence the mug, but is yummy nonetheless)...
When it was completed, he wanted to lick it to see if it was really poisonous (testing shows that it's not)...those of you who know his great-grandmother, please don't tell her, but Ben spotted an owl in the gift-shop yesterday, and suggested getting it as a present for her because he knows that she loves owls...he's a sweet little boy...
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