Christmas Time Is Here... At our local Zoo!

Every year, our local zoo, The Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, NJ decorates the for Christmas. They put up lights all around the fencing, add some additional light sculptures through the park and of course have special guest. Admission is free, however they ask that you bring some food for the needy. This is the first year my family and I ventured out to this event even though we have been to the zoo many times before in the summers. We packed up a bag a food, got the three kids ready, grabbed my camera bag and headed out the door. We left our house around 4:30 for a 5:00 PM opening. Traffic was horrendous and not just for this opening, but just general Jersey traffic. I tried to navigate around it with Google Maps but they just put be back the same road I was already on, so we just had to push our way through the traffic. Once we got to the main road the zoo is on, it was smooth sailing and arrive shortly after 5. To our surprise, it was a rather low attendance based on what we have heard. We we go there and made our way through the entrance we saw our local news team (CBS 2-New York) getting ready to film a news story with the local weather man. We made our way around the collective group of folks looking to get on TV. That was not our goal so we just snuck around and made our way through the park. I was surprised to see most of the animal still out as it was rather chilly. There where the alpaca's, a kangaroo, penguins of course and the barn was open to walk through to see the horse, pig and chickens. Along the way was came across the Monkey's, although they were not out, the entrance was lit up with Christmas lights. This is where our photo today comes from. I really like the way it came out, but of course i wanted to enhance it a bit.

Hope you like it!