Adventure 50/50 : Wild Lights

Every year the Woodland Park Zoo puts on Wild Lights, a huge display of sparkling lights around the zoo. We've wanted to go for for years, but never managed to.

The neighborhood next to ours -- Phinney Ridge -- does a festive fundraiser every year involving illuminated holiday monkeys. ("Why monkeys? Because they're fun and unique, and they complement Wild Lights at the Woodland Park Zoo...").  This year we decided to sponsor a monkey (after all, it's a fundraiser), and for our donation, were rewarded with a pair of Wild Lights tickets.

Tonight we managed to get the stars to align... and right in time as it's the LAST DAY BEFORE I TURN 51. (How is this possible???)

WE WENT TO WILD LIGHTS!!!

Here's what's weird. I think if we hadn't just been to Butchart Gardens we would have enjoyed it more. It was pretty, yes. But it felt like a lot of people all trying to take selfies, rather than admiring the pretty lights. But maybe that's how things always are.

Still, we did admire the pretty lights, like these lovely siamangs going over the path:

and this procession of komodo dragons:

and this frolic of otters:

this sweet pair of ostriches:

and a frosty narwhal:

The nicest display was the "African watering hole", complete with elephants approaching and retreating, and Thompson's gazelles leaping in the background:

 and a smiling hippo in the water, too...

Plus lots of just random pretty lights.

One place we didn't visit... but we were happy to see it was there...