Winnipeg Trip–Day 6 Winnipeg (Thursday, October 2, 2014)

We started the day with a trip to the Assiniboine Park Zoo which is a beautiful zoo with some really interesting exhibits.  The owls were a unique exhibit as you don’t normally see owls at zoos.  There was also a really neat exhibit where the badgers were active.  As our state animal, I was ashamed to admit this was the first badger I had ever seen in person.  They also have a polar bear exhibit (part of which was closed due to maintenance) that seems to closely resemble the exhibit at the Detroit Zoo.  And like many zoos these days it seems, they had an Australian Walkabout with emus and red kangaroos.  A joey about 8 months old was so much fun to watch.  Here are some pictures:

Also, like as is often the case at zoos, the animals not in captivity that wander the zoo can be just as interesting.  Winnipeg has an abundance of red squirrels (as opposed to the much larger grey squirrel we are used to) one of which had dug its way into the butterfly exhibit (which only had a few butterflies left as it was the end of the season).  There were also a fair number of prairie dogs in random exhibits.  It’s funny how they make up an exhibit at the Minnesota Zoo but roam free at this zoo.  I also enjoyed the birds athough a few less Canadian geese might have been more enjoyable.  At one point, we looked at an exhibit and had to figure out which actually belonged as there were Canadian geese, peacocks, and cranes.  Here are a few of the highlights:

I got a good chuckle out of this weather station:

It may be hard to read the sign so here is what it says:

Weather Station

If the Rock is wet
…it’s raining

If the rock is swaying
…it’s windy

If the rock is hot
…it’s sunny

If the rock is cool
…it’s overcast

If the rock is white
…it’s snowing

If the rock is blue
…it’s cold

If the rock is gone
…tornado

Up to the minute

For a late lunch we headed to the Polo Park Mall which is a very nice mall but nothing special to a tourist and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the hotel.

We stayed at the Fairfield Inn & Suites (a free night from a promotion of staying at Marriott hotels previously).  This one came with a little waterpark that was so much fun.  There was no one else in the pool area and so we had it to ourselves.  There was a tube slide, water fountains, a zero depth pool, and a donut shaped area that had quite a strong current.  When we swam against the current, we really couldn’t move forward and with very little effort it would float us around in a circle.  We laughed like little kids as we enjoyed it all.  Here are some pictures.