Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo - Part 2

After the harrowing experience just getting to the zoo, (Which you can read about HERE) we had an awesome time. This zoo is so cool. The whole thing is built into the side of a mountain, so as you walk through the zoo, you're walking up the mountain and the view just keeps getting better. This was the first view after we got to an overlook.

As I said in the last post, the main draw of the zoo, besides the views, is the fact that you can pet the giraffes. They have one of the biggest giraffe populations in the US. They also have an indoor area, and in there they were training young giraffe.

They also have okapis. :)

Like I said in my first post, these things are everywhere. :)

View #2.

Part of the giraffe exhibit as seen from above.

This reminded me of Lost. :)

View #3.

The giraffes weren't the only things you could pet. They also had some wallabies out and about.

We all had to take turns getting our pictures taken petting them. :)

These two ladies even had a baby out for visitors to pet! :)

It was adorable!

The colors aren't the greatest in these pictures, the lighting was strange in many places in the reptile house. It was very cool looking, but it didn't make for very good pictures. This room was the coolest. They had snakes in these tanks with all different colors of glass rocks, along with pieces of art. It was so unique. I wish more of my pictures had turned out.

Another visitor to the zoo walked up to this little guy and handed him a piece of popcorn. He took it!

If you look closely, you can see a mountain lion, which Sasha is photographing.

That's all my pictures from the zoo. If you still want more, I have a few more of my best pictures on my photography blog, which you can find HERE. I still have more pictures to come from the rest of the trip, so stay tuned for those!

Colorado Trip - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

One of the best days we spent in Colorado was the day that we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. And it was also one of the worst days. Why, you ask? Well, get ready for a story.

For starters, this particular zoo is 3 hours away from my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Nathan's house. So we had a long day of driving. That's not the bad part though. This zoo is TOTALLY worth a three hour drive. It might actually be the best zoo I've ever been too. Only the Henry Doorly Zoo can rival it in sheer awesomeness.

No, the reason that the three hour drive was so bad, was that my iPod died that morning. Like flat out gave up the ghost. Plus, my iPad had also died on the way to Colorado, so we had absolutely no music for the entire three hour drive to Colorado Springs. We still have no idea why those things died. Maybe the altitude? Who knows. The iPod came back to life a few days later, but the iPad never recovered.

Anyway, we had no music for three hours. Nothing. Thankfully Shaina had brought a book to read, so for three hours she read Wuthering Heights to us. Though I still have no idea what Wuthering Heights is about. Was there a ghost? I can't remember. It must not have been the most riveting book. Sorry, Shaina. At least it kept me occupied at the time. :p

But all that was still not too bad. The real problems were just getting started. When we finally made it to Colorado Springs the car's temperature warning light came on, and it was sounding alarms. Now, my car had been having problems like this before. We had tried to leave for Colorado the week before, and it died with smoke pouring out of the hood before we'd even made it to Shelby. But I'd gotten it fixed and we left the next week. There should have been no further problems!

So now, in addition to the blaring heat alarms, the GPS isn't taking us to the right spot, and we went up a steep hill ending up in what appeared to be some sort of gated community where a bunch of rich people lived. To top it all off, Sasha was starting to feel sick! So I called Uncle Nathan and he walked me through what to do. He thought it was just overheating from driving up and down mountains all day. So I dumped water into the car, at his direction, trying to cool it down. He told us to find the zoo and just let the car cool down all day. If it didn't start he'd come get us, but if it did start, we should just drive as far as we can, and if it dies, he could meet us wherever we ended up.

Since we couldn't just leave the car sitting in what is quite possibly a rich person's giant driveway, I had to drive a little more. I knew the zoo had to be nearby, because even when the GPS is off, it's not off by much, so we slowly left the posh little village, taking a different turn, a little further up the steep hill. This turned out to be the right place, so I parked the car. Sasha was still feeling bad, but she said she'd probably be fine after awhile, so we just walked slowly, and eventually she came around.

After the zoo we did manage to drive back to Uncle Nathan and Aunt Ruth's but we had to drive so slowly to prevent it from overheating that it was like 9 or 10 o'clock that night before we got home. And the next day we took the car to a mechanic and left it there for a few days to rack up another huge bill, and even then it wasn't fixed completely. I had to have the transmission replaced when we got back to Harlan. All in all that summer, that car cost me like $3000. I let it live for another year before replacing it, which is more than it deserved.

And that was why the day was so horrible. Now, after all that, that day was probably still my favorite day of the trip. And here's why.

I got to feed a giraffe. We went to the zoo to pet the giraffes, but unbeknownst to me, Shaina bought a bunch of lettuce for me to feed to them. It was so awesome. :)

This is what makes this zoo is so amazing.

This is the reason we drove three hours to go to this particular zoo. When I was 18, my parents sent me to a camp/seminar thing in Colorado Springs, and on one day of that trip, part of the group I was with had gone to a zoo, and I remembered petting a giraffe. When my cousins and I decided to go to Colorado, I figured out where that zoo had been, and we made a point to go there, so we could all pet them. It was so worth the trouble. :)

This is the kind of joy you can only get from contact with these magnificent creatures. :)

I'm going to make this the end of this post. I was just going to do a picture post, but then I remembered what happened that day, and that story ended up taking up all my time. I'll do another post soon, and I might even do a post on my photo blog. I think I have enough good material from the zoo trip. Keep an eye out for that!

Baby Giraffes - A PSA

Public Service Announcement:

THIS

Is a newborn baby giraffe.

This beautiful GIANT bundle of sweetness and light,

IS A NEWBORN BABY GIRAFFE.

Baby giraffes are 6 feet tall when they are born.

So stop sharing this abomination on Facebook!!!!!!!!

This THING is NOT a baby giraffe!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by someone who loves giraffes far more than you EVER will. Which is obvious because you mistook a dik-dik, the worlds smallest antelope, for a giraffe, the world's TALLEST LAND MAMMAL!!!!!!!

(Disclaimer: I do not actually hate dik-diks, despite my apparent animosity towards this one, I just REALLY love giraffes.)

P.S. Woah, this brought out my sass! This is the first rant I've written in a LONG time! I think it was for a worthy cause though. Gotta do my part to stem the tide of zoological ignorance! :p

Ziraffe

Last week, my favorite YouTube artist, Mary Doodles, was asking for art ideas on Twitter.

I replied, not expecting it to get noticed.

She noticed!

County Fair 2012

Today was the entry day for the fair. I had been debating whether or not I even wanted to enter anything this year. It cost big bucks to get something framed, and for the pitiful monetary prizes that they award, it isn't worth spending $50 to get a painting framed, even if you won 1st prize. ($2) I lucked out last year and I found some old frames that fit my paintings and drawings, but this year it would have been a lot more challenging, since my paintings are on canvas and canvas board. So I elected to just skip the art department.

I almost didn't enter anything at all, but I decided this morning to enter some photography. Nothing like waiting till the last minute, eh? :p I didn't have as many as I did last year, but I did have 5 good ones that I found. Except for the last one, these are all pictures that I already shared on my photo blog in the past, so they may look familiar. The only difference is these are all BEFORE any manipulation.

One of the rules for entry is no photo manipulation. Not even color correction. In my opinion it's a stupid rule. You might as well ban any camera lenses that alter the color before you take the picture. You might as well ban the use of different colored lights! It's about the art, people... Come on. Are you going to start saying that we can't use certain brands of pens for drawing because they make the pictures too colorful? As you can tell I really hate this insane rule.

Anyway, enough of my rantings... :p Here are my five pictures.

In the "People" category:

In the "Animals/Birds" category:

In the "Things/Still Life" Category:

In the "Miscellaneous" category:

In the "Life in Iowa" category:

The Firework was from my first ever PROPER fireworks photoshoot last week on July 4th. I used the Bulb feature on my camera, along with a tripod, so the pictures actually turned out well. I plan to do a post featuring my best ones pretty soon.

So, that's it for my fair entries this year. Hopefully I'll get something. I'm not really expecting much, but I'm hoping that at least the picture of the Barn Swallows is worth a Blue. We'll see. :)

4th Semester Paintings

I'm finally getting around to posting my paintings from last semester! I still have more art than this to post, but at least I'm getting it up, slowly but surely.

My first painting was for a grid assignment. We were to draw a grid on a picture and paint it. I chose the picture below.

I ended up with this painting after I was finished.

The second painting was supposed to be a science themed painting. We were to take any branch of science and illustrate a specific scientific principle. I chose refraction through a prism, but I put my own spin on it.

The third painting was a mythological painting. I chose a phoenix. Because phoenixes are awesome. :p I used photos of peacocks for references.

The next painting was actually three paintings. We were supposed to paint either a triptych, or a diptych, and I went with a tryptich after I chose my subject, eyes.

When I remembered that the space between two eyes is about the same size as an eye, I thought it would be perfect to paint a pair of eyes as a triptych.

The last painting was a rather different sort of assignment. We were supposed to build a composite picture in Photoshop, and then after having it printed, glue it to a canvas and paint over it. I made a flying giraffe in Photoshop.

And then I painted over top of it. Apparently it turned out that my teacher meant that we were supposed to add to the Photoshopped picture with paint, but I must have missed that, because I just used the whole thing as a base for a painting.

My teacher didn't mind though and I still got an A.

Overall, this semester had some of my favorite paintings in it. The only two I wasn't too crazy about the end result were the giraffe paintings, but I loved how my other ones turned out. And all of these were a thousand times better than my self portrait two semesters ago. >Shivers<

I have loved these painting classes, and I'm kind of sad that there were only two classes available. I won't have a proper studio arts class in my final semester. Hopefully I will in the future though, we'll just have to see what happens. :)

A Trip to the Zoo

Monday I went to the zoo. Not that this is something new to me, but this time I went with my brother Joel, and my cousins Shaina and Sarah. We went in the morning and meet up in the afternoon with our friends Alex and Amanda, who are sisters, as well as Robert and Rachel, with their daughter Ariana.

Of course, among the first stops were the okapis and giraffes. :)

Shaina and I posed by the baby giraffe statue.

We rode the skyfari up to the top of the zoo and walked back down.

One of the sea lions had given birth just a week ago. Have you ever seen a sea lion nurse?

The baby is pretty much adorable beyond all reason. I want one. :p

After walking all the way back to the entrance we met our friends.

We had waited on the three most important exhibits so we could go through with them. First up was the completely renovated aquarium. I have more pictures from one of my solo trips that I will post in the future. The new Jellyfish room is amazing!

Next stop was the jungle, where we spent most of our time.

This happens to me a lot. :) This has to be the most interesting angle so far though. :)

We also went through the desert Dome and the Kingdoms of the Night. When we got out we found Rachel's parents sitting in the shade. We talked for awhile, and then most of us went on to see the cats and bears.

After the zoo we went to a Greek restaurant called King Kong. Most of us had gyros. They were so good!

After supper, most everyone wanted to do something else, so we went to the Old Market. Shaina and my feet were really hurting though, so we stayed behind and watched some shows on my computer. I'm sure there will be a next time though. We are already planning to go see Brave on opening night! I can't wait!