We ran away to the Zoo

I was going stir crazy and needed to get out of the house and travel somewhere. It had been a week of fairly average weather and family activities had not allowed us to travel too far from home, but with a rare opportunity to have a Friday off, I jumped at the chance to escape. I gave Jay and Ivy a few ideas of where we could go, but I always knew that they would choose Dubbo Zoo, and considering that we had the annual Zoo pass to gain free entry I was pretty pleased with their choice. We packed up the always ready camp gear, chucked in some clothes and the kids new sleeping bags and hit the road for the 5 hour (including a stop) journey. Our first stop in Dubbo was the information centre where I asked the volunteer if he could suggest a cheap place to camp, I was pretty impressed when he pointed me in the direction of a free camp, you can't get much cheaper than that!. The camp was about 10 km of town, had toilets but no showers or drinkable water but that wasn't a worry. The limit of one night stay was a bit of a problem though as we wanted to stay 2, but after having a chat to our friendly caravanning niehbours who were planning on staying longer than us I decided that we wouldn't be pushing the boundaries too much for an extra night. After snuggling down for an early Friday night we left the next morning for our day at the Zoo. We had brought our own bikes to ride around the 5km track, Jay had blown out his tyre the night before at camp, so we hired him one, and set off following the one way road catching as many off the keeper talks as we could along the way. There were a few moments that I questioned why I was dragging a nearly 5 year old (who doesn't particularly love riding) around, but with the bribery of an ice block being a great incentive, she pushed herself till the end, only having a few melt downs where she insisted that she "can't do it anymore". The kids loved Dubbo Zoo and so did I, so much that we returned the next day to have a bbq lunch and play in the playground before heading back home. 

I'm not sure when our next escape will be what with the cooler weather coming and soccer season staring, so I'm glad we took this opportunity to leave the real world behind even if it was only for a short time.

Mumma Bear.