Saturday was our last scheduled event. We went to see the Holiday Light Display at National Zoo. I remembered three things about the National Zoo from our previous visit: 1) the escalator out of the subway at Woodley Park -- Zoo Stop was very long, 2) the orangutangs can traverse on lines that go over the walkways at the zoo, and 3) the zoo is a fairly small zoo.
We took Porter for a walk and sat outside for a bit with Alex while Porter and Augie played around noon. I did a little packing and cleaning, but most of the cleaning we saved for Sunday as it is predicted to raining starting around 2 pm. We can do the cleaning while it is raining.
We left for the zoo around 3:45 pm. We wanted to be able to get to the zoo when it opened at 5 pm. Although they were doing maintenance on some of the metro lines, our route to the metro route to the zoo was opened and we had no problem getting to Metro Center and then catching the red line to Woodley Park. As I remembered, the first escalator out of the subway is very long. In fact, it is 204' long and yet is the third longest in the DC Metro area. The link is a video on Facebook of someone riding the escalator. Once we were out of the subway, it was 4 blocks to the zoo.
We arrived at the zoo and went through the line to check in and then we started our walk through the amazing National Zoo lights. The light displays were very well done and definitely not flashy or gawdy like some displays can be. The trees were decorated in many place with lights all way out on the largest branches. The best part of the display were the scenes with animals made out colorful parachute like fabric over metal frames. In the zoo lights literature, they are referred to as animal lanterns. These were lit from within and were really beautiful. We made our way down the single path seeing each of the light displays. We ended up at the other end of the zoo which is also an entrance or exit. We decided to walk back through the display, so that we could exit from the same place that we came in as it was close to the subway.
It was not surprising that it was getting very crowded as we made our way back through. The temperatures were still in the 50s and it was a very comfortable night to be at an outdoor exhibit.
Although it was dark and there were very few live animal displays; we did see the Orangutang Transport System or O-Line. These are the series of 50 foot high towers with cables suspended across them that I remembered from our previous visit. The orangutangs can use the lines to get from the ape house to the think tank (another area of the zoo) by crossing over the people walkways. They can get off of them until they get the other area. Click the o-line link for a video of the a mother orangutang and her baby on the O-line.
The following are some our photos from our visit to the Holiday Light Display at the National Zoo.
Among the cacti
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