A worthwhile detour

I had a long 10-hour drive (half of it through a snowstorm driving south in Utah) to realize that while I'm intense about some things in a bad way (see previous blog), I'm also really intense about the things my kids love. I've learned to love classical music because Bianca loves it. Portia loves koalas. That's why we drove two hours farther at 2 am Friday night to go to the San Diego Zoo so she could see a real-life koala. And it was so worth it.

We arrived in San Diego at 4 am, slept a good five hours in a hotel, then awoke and headed to the zoo. It was really wonderful and really, really expensive. And the first thing we saw were the koalas and they were so cute and cuddly. Portia wore her koala shirt and brought her stuffed baby koala (Kalli) with us. The man at the zoo even gave Portia a cluster of eucalyptus leaves for her to feed to Kalli.

Bianca loves turtles and tortoises. The San Diego Zoo had a ton of different species and varieties. Her favorites were the giant tortoises.

They also had a panda bear and polar bears and it was overall a really nice day (not too crowded either). We drove to LA after the zoo to stay the night with Susannah, where my mom met us also, to wait until it was time to board the ship. . .