San Diego Zoo too

 

A humming bird we watched while we were sitting on a bench taking a break.

San Diego Zoo is great to photographs, most of the enclosures let you photograph without going thru glass or fences. This a pose I've taken of my son multiple times, either hand in front of face or tongue out, his way of saying "enough photos dad".

Growing up I loved reptiles and amphibians so the Reptile House is always one of my favorites at any zoo. This one was pretty good because most of the glass was nice and clean, perfect for good photos.

You might have noticed no Panda Bears which are a huge draw at San Diego, the line see them was so long we skipped it since we've seen them before.

San Diego Zoo

 In February 2026 we took a trip to San Diego just to hang out and visit animal related places, starting with the Zoo.

This is our second trip to the Zoo, the first was maybe 15 years ago.

I love shooting birds and Flamingos are wonderful to photograph, bright and colorful with huge yellow eyes.

This is as much of any of the hippos we saw out of the water.

Babies of any animals are so cute (except baby robins) but so hard to get photos off. I would swear these two were chatting, something like "ok, your turn, you look at the camera while I look away".

II watched them for quite a while and this was maybe the closest I came to catch both of them looking my way at the same time.

More Six Mile Slough

 

This otter was very camera shy and very fast. He swam around the pond and boardwalk eating fish but somehow always managed to be behind trees or bushes.

We finally saw a couple of alligators in one of the ponds.

T

This woodpecker was on a tree about 10 feet from the boardwalk and we watched it for quite a while. My head started to hurt just listening to it hammering away at the tree.

We expected to see lots of birds, turtles, a few alligators but we were very surprised when starring into the woods to see a bobcat and racoon having a starring match just a few feet away from each other.

Six Mile Slough

 One of my driving buddies Tim and I spent a morning at this wetland preserve in Fort Myers while he was in town.

There is a mile or so path and boardwalk through the wetlands that passes several lakes and ponds. We were there pretty early in the morning so the lake was mirror smooth which makes for good reflection photos.

There is a lot of wildlife including many different types of birds.

Cars On Fifth

 One of my best fun driving road buddies was in Florida for a couple of weeks so we did some biking, wildlife viewing and attended the Cars on Fifth show in Naples. For two cars guys it was several hours of "I want that one, and one of those and...". Basically every dream car on our wish lists.

The show had a little of everything but mostly high-end exotics.

Maryland Tim, one of my fun driving friends.

It was very crowded and almost impossible to get good photos of cars without people in the way, or shadows or reflections of people.

There were people everywhere. The show's gotten so big they are talking about canceling it or moving it to another location in the future.

Mclaren had a huge collection of very cool cars.

It was just a couple of month before that I saw my first LFA in person, at Cars & Coffee Boca and here they had 2 of them.

There were Porsche's of every model and color, it was like the old Sears christmas catalog from when I was a kid, what dreams were made of. 

The Ford GTs had their own parking lot for both 05-06 generations and several of the latest generation.

There were so many Ferrari's they had their own street and it was full of every color and model up to include a La Ferrari.