Vacation day 7.5 part two

So when we last left Chris, he was alone on the Observers' deck, loudly arguing with himself that there was nothing to fear but fear itself, while his knees shouted, "BS then, BS now!"  I finally talked myself into leaving the room and at least walking to the front end of the ship.  Moments later, I was pretty much frozen about 4 feet from the door, and slowly retreated.  About this time Laurie returned from the pilot room and shared the camera's view, which you saw yesterday.

"Laurie!  Thank God you're back!"

This is the room I was frozen in.

Later, we began our descent.  Not near as bad going down.

And just so you know it WAS a big ship and I wasn't a TOTAL weenie...

Now we didn't have Google maps problems this time, though we did have some "how did we miss that sign" problems... as well as a sizable construction hump getting in...

And then it was off to the key note, the gem of our vacation... lunch at TONY PACKO'S!!!!!

Yeah, the line was HUGE...

There were over 500 signed "buns" on display... running an interesting gamut...

No lie... every president from Jimmy Carter was there... Maggie Thatcher...  Teddy Garvin, even!  (Those that don't know the name, it's a hockey thing)

This flag was flown on the USS Toledo, a nuclear sub, and the entire crew signed it!

Of course, the M*A*S*H crew (Klinger helped make the place famous).

Was it worth it?  HELL YEAH!

A real Chris Martin Hall of Fame in one shot:  Hugh Downs, Sparky Anderson, Don Shula

Originally, celebrities signed real buns, but they began to crumble.  Only these two survive- Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

After lunch, we headed for the zoo.  I just missed a shot at an MLK mural on a building, but I did get the important one that came next...

So we found the zoo.  And many of you know we have a world class "children's" zoo in Fort Wayne.  How does Toledo stack up?  Well, if you took Ft Wayne's zoo, cut the exhibits and the fun stuff by around two thirds, and spread over a good twice the land area, you'd prolly still enjoy it better that Toledo, but it would be more similar.  Anyway, we salvaged some fun from it.

You got to touch a STARFISH- we were told it was ticklish.  So was my pet rock.

"Hey, you want to go out for dinner?  My meal... er, my treat."

Giant clam

"Baby, once you've had gar, you'll never go back..."

Sloth bear is well named... seconds later, he took a nap in his water.

See?

I think you get the theme here...

 The African train was about half the size of  FW's with half the animals and a guide who told us that while the African Hunting Dog (above) looks like a hyena (I think he was going for jackal here), that a hyena "was actually a cat."  WTH?????

Then, off to the "Arctic Encounter"... until he finally came out (below), the only "arctic encounter we were having was the AC in the basically abandoned indoor display.

Can't see the hippo?  Go to the next slide...

Still not happy?  Well, if you really want to know what they're doing....

...well, you asked...

I think the elephant looks like a rope... Eww, wait...

Baby galapagoses... galapogi?

Laurie and her friend, Quetzalcoatlsaurus...

So it was we staggered out of the zoo, and in our tried and true tradition, turned the wrong way out of the parking lot.  But we persevered, having only two questions- why didn't you tell us South Detroit was in fact US 24, and why didn't we listen when you told us South Detroit was closed ahead?  And with the last of our long trips in the books, we ended with a near exact 600 miles on the odometer from Monday to Thursday.  Hope you enjoyed as much as we did!