Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

I cannot get over how beautiful it is here. Will I ever be able to just glance at the mountains in the distance and not feel my heart swell?

Last weekend, my first weekend in Colorado, Jonathan and I took the kids to the most amazing zoo.


It is funny. Since we have both only ever lived in Virginia, we cannot help comparing every single aspect of life out here to life back there. And we both admitted that we figured any zoo we ever visited would pale in comparison to the National Zoo. I mean, it's the National Zoo. The zoo of our nation. It has panda bears.

But this zoo is better. It's called the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. We went ahead and became members of the zoo upon entering, because we figured we will go there often and after 2 visits, the yearly membership will have paid for itself.

The entire time, I kept thinking, I am so glad we joined the zoo so we can come here any time we want! It is about an hour away, in Colorado Springs. And the zoo is on the mountainside, so you walk up and down and it is so cool and breezy and shady. The day we went, it was 65 degrees. There is a big ski-lift that you can ride up the mountain and look down on the animals. (No, we did not ride up that with Blue and the Lion!) It seems like a rather small zoo, but they have so many animals... And there was so much for the kids to do. There are pony rides, a petting zoo, an antique carousel,


and the kids were able to feed and pet the giraffes.


We had such a great time! The zoo is open year-round so I was thinking we may go there for the Lion's birthday this year, since he loves The Lion King so much and was so excited to see a real lion--ahem, hence, his nickname.