Last Saturday, we woke up early and I (Doug) was feeling like it was time for a short road trip, as we haven’t done one in so long. So we decided to go. We had to be home by 5 as the girls all had a wedding shower to go to. We looked through all our “idea links” of things to do and remembered that I had bought a family year’s pass to the Oakland Zoo for less than what it costs for two people to go once. (Groupon is a great web site! They have half off or more deals for your city. You usually only have a few days to buy them, and this is where I got this great deal.)
We had never been to the Oakland Zoo as a family and we love going to the bay area, so within the hour we were on the road. We took the “scenic” route to Oakland so we could go past the huge TV towers in Walnut Grove (just outside Sacramento) and over the Altamont Pass so the kids could see the windmills. Then we arrived at the zoo and spent a few hours there and then went to one of our favorite science museums, the Chabot Space Center in Oakland as our “free” family pass was expiring in a few weeks, and we hadn’t been there in a while.
We really liked the Oakland Zoo. It was nice, and the animals really weren’t in enclosed cages. Sure a few like the bats were, but most only had a fence keeping them away from the public. They were allowed to roam around and had a lot of space.
As we passed the TV towers in Walnut Grove, we learned that these are among the top 4 tallest structures in the WORLD! There are three towers here with the tallest being 2,051 feet. That’s 200 stories tall! It’s the 4th largest structure. The 2nd and 3rd are also TV towers in North Dakota and they are only 15 feet taller, and the #1 tallest structure is a building in Dubai at 2,717 feet!
We soon came to Altamont Pass where the freeway goes right through the Altamont Pass Wind Farm. It was built in the early 80’s and to this day is the largest wind farm in the WORLD with about 4000 separate wind turbines. And lots of cows grazing.
If you want to see some cool photos of the wind turbines taken by someone else, click HERE. We got out and found a geocache here and it was very windy!
We arrived at the zoo shortly after and saw lots of cool things. I think our favorite was the monkeys. There were about 5 different types of monkeys and chimps and they were all pretty active jumping around, playing and making lots of noise!
Turn up your speakers and listen to this:
Various animals we saw:
The bats were active as they were just getting fed. It’s so weird to have an animal that lives upside down. Don’t they get headaches from all the blood rushing to their heads?
Jacob and Hannah liked the kid sized door they found!
We saw some giant turtles and there was a turtle play area.
Marissa, Jacob and Hannah went on a (boring they said) train ride, while Shelley, Meghan and I waited and took a nap. We then had some time left so we headed over to the Chabot Space Center as it was only about 5 miles away.
Like usual, it was not crowded and it seems as if we are the only ones there every time we go. We got to see an IMAX movie on the planetarium dome.
Here we are before the movie started.
Here we are during the movie.
Normally we are here during the evening so we can go and see the telescopes they have open each night. But this time we were here during the day and they actually had two telescopes going during the day. In one we saw Venus and in the other we saw the sun and the sun flares that it kicks off.
The kids love playing in the fog machine and driving a real space capsule.
This time they had something new and it was a zero-gravity exhibit. You go in and experience what it’s like to be in zero-gravity. And when you are “floating” it takes your photo and emails it to you. Here are our photos we got:
On the way home we went through the Caldecott Tunnel that goes through the Oakland Hills. It’s not too long, about 3/4 mile long but the kids love going through it. There are actually three tunnels, each with two lanes of traffic. The middle tunnel alternates traffic directions with the flow. So in the morning traffic goes one direction through the middle tunnel and in the afternoon, it goes the opposite direction.
The first two tunnels were built in 1937. (They knew how to do stuff like that way back then?? WOW!) and the 3rd tunnel was built in 1964. There is so much traffic now that goes through the tunnels, (160,000 cars per day) that this year they started building a 4th tunnel so each direction will have two tunnels all the time. It will take then 4 years to build it and cost over $400 million dollars! But guess what? You know all that newly found money Obama is giving away called the ‘American Recovery & Reinvestment Act’? It’s paying for over half the cost! Now each time we go through the tunnels, we honk and yell ‘THANKS OBAMA’ out the window.
All in all it was a very fun road trip!
