Seattle; Monday, 02 May, 2022

I didn’t have the greatest of nights sleep and ended up giving up a little after 6am, working on the assumption that if I wore myself out I’d be more likely to get at least a couple of hours sleep on the flight home.

I wandered down to breakfast and then headed back up to my room to pack before heading down to checkout and leave my luggage with reception. From there I walked down to the bus stop on 3rd Avenue to pick up the number 5 bus out to the Woodland Park Zoo.

The zoo is located about a 20 minute bus drive north of the city centre, and it was clear that on a damp Monday in early May I wasn’t going to have to worry about the crowds.

The zoo arranges its displays into themed areas that are linked together off of a main path. This works well as it means you can see everything just by heading along the main path and then just turning off when you get to a different themed zone, follow the path round the zone which then drops you back onto the main path either just where you left it or very close so that you don’t miss any exhibits.

Given the weather I wasn’t really expecting much to be out in their enclosures, but in most places it was possible to see all the exhibits. In fact the only display where most of the animals were hiding was the one specifically on the animals of the Pacific North West, I suppose they are used to hiding in their natural environment, and this was their natural environment.

I stopped part way round to have a quick lunch in the zoo restaurant before continuing on my wander.

In the end I lost track of time a bit and as I headed back to the entrance my phone bleeped to let me know it was 4 hours until my flight – the time I had planned on being back at the hotel collecting my belongings, not still out at the zoo.

Thankfully I was lucky with a bus arriving as soon as I left the zoo and after a quick luggage pick-up at the hotel I cheated and grabbed an Uber out to the airport, arriving just as checkin was opening for the flight home.

The journey through the airport was significantly easier than I was expecting with the queues for TSA only being about 20 minutes long so I had plenty of time in the lounge before we were called forward for boarding to start the long journey home.

Weather

Damp/Fog/Mist Damp/Fog/Mist
AM PM
Warm (10-20C, 50-68F)
16ºC/61ºF