Fun in the Playstructure

The Albuquerque zoo has lots of great features: a big open grassy area for running around, a flock of peacocks (and peahens and peachicks) that roam the zoo loose, excellent animal enclosures that allow you to get close to the animals, and lots of cute baby animals. In my opinion, though, the very best feature of our zoo is the kids play structure in the middle of the zoo! It is a multi-story foam and canvas structure, complete with really fast slides and rope swings and zip lines. The sign outside the structure area says "anyone under four feet may use this play area," but the zoo is generally so empty (at least on weekdays and in the winter) that I've gone in to the structure with Adelaida several times. (We have an annual pass for the zoo and often meet other moms and kids at the zoo for playdates.)

We have so much fun playing there! I took a few pictures of us in the play structure and wanted to share them with you all.

This is Adelaida in an area with a woven canvas floor and large foam noodles hanging from the ceiling.


Adelaida hasn't yet learned to crawl to me when I call her (she could take some lessons from Maggie and Murphy in that!), so I had to tempt her across this section by placing leaves in front of her. She would crawl to the leaves, pick them up, and try to eat them!


She wasn't at all afraid of the foam noodles as they swung into her head. At first she tried to use them to stand up, but gave up since they aren't attached at the base and she couldn't grab onto them very well.


This was a triangular canvas hallway with a curved floor. Adelaida crawled through it without any problem, but couldn't quite figure out how to stand up in it -- she would grasp the side, try to stand, and hit her head on the side as it sloped inward. (Think about how small this enclosure is and remember that I was crawling through it all with Adelaida -- so much fun!)


This was taken on a cooler day, with Adelaida all bundled up. She was having so much fun crawling around!


Dale took Adelaida down one of the slides. I'm sure she had no idea what was happening, but Dale sure enjoyed it!


Dale coached Adelaida through an area with large noodles attached to both the floor and ceiling. She really wanted to stand up on those!


I plan to visit the zoo as much as I can with Adelaida, and it doesn't really matter to me if we see the new baby elephant or the snow leopards or get to feed the lorikeets, but we'll definitely be visiting the play structure every time we are at the zoo!