Sunday 1-14 Just having fun

Just having fun

There is no square dancing on Sunday in the Rio Grand Valley so we decided to go to the Zoo. The Gladys Porter Zoo is in Brownsville which is about 70 miles from J-5 RV Park. We took I2 all the way there. It's Sunday and the traffic was lighter than normal. If you're not a member of the zoo it cost $5 dollars to park in the parking lot but there's a parking lot across the street that's free. We walked around the zoo for a couple of hours and had fun. The zoo is on 31 acres and houses 400 animal species and 250 tropical and neo-tropical species. We saw different monkeys, white and yellow tigers, giraffes, tropical birds, reptiles, tortoises, salt and fresh water alligator, hippopotamus, camels, zebras, rhinos and many more animals. They have a small petting zoo, where people can pet goats, a pot belly pig and a few other animals. They had a two week contest to name a newborn giraffe, on January 3rd 2018 after 1125 votes they decided on J.C. named in memory of Juan Carlos Gonzales. As we walked around we learned about the animals via signs. Larry knows how much I enjoy going to zoos so he tries to take me whenever possible. 

A baby Mexican spider monkey swinging by its arm

The giant tortoises

One of the zebras

The giraffe exhibit with the baby giraffe J.C.

The tigers soaking up the sun

In the evening I went down to the clubhouse, J-5 had cake and ice cream to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries of the residents in the park at 6:00. After the cake and ice cream the J-5 Olympics began. The activities committee came up with a fun Senior Olympics, it consisted of teams of four people and four different stations. The stations were 1) golf, 2) ladder throw, 3) Yardzee and 4) cotton ball. The golf station was a small green with eight plastic cups with number on each. One member of each team has three puts, the numbers get added together and that's the score for the team. The ladder throw was a ladder that was six steps tall and each step had a number on it. A member of each team throws six socks full of beans and the step that the sock wraps around is the points the team gets. If the sock wrapped around the back or side they get one point. After throwing the six socks the points are added up and that's the point the team gets. Yardzee was played like Yahtzee, there were five wooden dice in a bucket. A team member throws the dice and is scored just like Yahtzee. After three throws that score goes to the team. The last station was 50 cotton balls on a cookie sheet, a bowl and a spatula. The team member is blindfolded and has one minute to put the cotton balls in the bowl with the spatula. At the end of the minute the cotton balls are counted and that's the score the team gets. After doing all four stations the points are added up for the total for the team. The team with the highest score wins the Olympics. Each team member got a prize and each person with the highest score in each station got a prize. There were 12 teams and we had a great time. The committee did a super job.

We had a very fun day.