When I left off my post on Wednesday, we were just getting ready to head into the heart of the Zoo lights experience at the John Ball Zoo. If you missed it, you can get caught up here. As I said, the photos I shared with you yesterday were sort of the appetizer for what we yet had in store as we made our way up the side of the hills of the zoo.
I'll tell you right now, unlike a lot of my other posts, this one is going to be mostly photos and very little text. If that is your jam then cool, I hope you like it. If you prefer more text, I'll try to do better next week!
The exhibit itself is broken up into a couple of different segments. Right before what you see above, there was a section that had the different animals of the Chinese Zodiac. I made sure to take a shot of the Dragon since that is my animal. Unfortunately, due to the crowd, I wasn't able to get the horse for 
I'd say the first section was flowers, but I don't think that would be entirely accurate. I'm not actually sure what the theme was here, perhaps forest. You be the judge with the following photos.
The trails in this part of the zoo are actually set up as a series of switchbacks, so it gives you an interesting perspective on what is ahead, what is behind, and what is right in front of you. I loved the giant bees that you see above. That was probably my favorite part of this section. Especially the fact that they couldn't sting you!
As we exited the forest section, things started to become even more green if you can believe that and we eventually found ourselves in what I might call a fantasy jungle...
The greens in this area were pretty intense and it was probably my favorite area of the whole exhibit. My only complaint is that people clearly can't read the signs. The first photo is an animatronic display that had sound and movement. There was a pretty clear sign that said if you were standing to stay to the right and if you were moving along to keep to the left, but people were standing like idiots taking photos on the left.
After another small forest area, things started to take on a more aquatic theme. It was in this second forest area that we ran into the owls. I thought at first it was just noises that they were playing via speakers when I heard the distinct "who who who". It wasn't until I started looking closer that I realized we were right next to the owl enclosure. I could see their silhouette in the dark.
The last couple of photos above are another example of how the different elevations allowed you to get a different view of the lights.
The jellyfish were really cool, but as you can see I also had to get a nice shot of the Slippery When Wet sign as homage to Bon Jovi!
As you can see from some of the photos, it was hard to not get a lot of people in them. It was just that packed. I have one photo I didn't share where a lady is looking right at me. She probably thinks I was some kind of creep taking pictures of her, but really I was just trying to get a good vantage of the lights above her.
At about $30 USD per person, this wasn't the cheapest thing we did all weekend, but it was still a great time and I am glad we went. I don't know if I would do it again now that I have done it once, but it was definitely worth the trip!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or
