My in-laws (one set anyway!) are in town this week. This has given us an excuse to finally play tourist in our new hometown. Yesterday, we trekked all over the Nashville Zoo. It’s been quite some time since I last went to a zoo and this one was pretty great.

We had brunch at Prime 108 inside Union Station, and boy did people know how to travel back in the early parts of the 20th century:

The roof is stained glass, which was hard to photograph but really beautiful. Why did we (globally, it seems) move away from making such fancy and pretty buildings? Imagine if airports were this nice. It would make flying a lot more enjoyable!

The zoo grounds were originally part of a small plantation and is now a historic farm on the zoo property. The original house is still up, it was built 1846 and renovated in the 1880s. I shall be moving into the house as soon as everyone’s backs are turned.

 This is seriously, my dream home. Especially to sit on the porch and just knit in a rocking chair while sipping on a mint julep. I may or may not be wearing a hoop skirt or forty. Speaking of which! There was some knitted instruments on display!

Can you spot the hand carder on the table? Along with a small pile of cotton! This was inside the replica slave quarters. I’m surprised they had hand carders out, I know we did see a cotton gin in the back shed with the other old tools. I would have assumed that by this point, a farm that would have a cotton gin would also have a drum carder. Speaking of fiber, this is a farm and it’s just past lambing season. This cutie was born mid March:

Apparently, he’s a Cotswold sheep and in keeping with the “historical” farm aspect, it’s an old and rare breed. I named him Lamby McLamberson. I didn’t see any grown up Sheepy McSheepersons but I’m sure Mama Ewe was around somewhere. Sadly, no yarn or fiber is sold at the gift shop.

I know some folks don’t like zoos and they sometimes bug me. Then I saw this little guy peering out at us:

And I realized that we as silly creatures must be as interesting to them as they are to us. The whole meerkat exhibit was really cool. They’re funny little things, aren’t they?

Speaking of funny things, flamingos always strike me as quite odd and ungainly birds.

Ostriches don’t seem very graceful or elegant either. There was a pretty good selection of various tropical birds with quite a bit of room to fly around. This Hyacinth Macaw (one of several) has excellent plumage.

What a brilliant blue. The macaws were near the gibbons, I couldn’t get a good photo of them but they were howling up a storm. They were having a heated discussion about something that you could hear out in the parking lot. I would not want to be near a troop of them when they start howling in the wild. It was quite impressive and reminded me of some stitch n bitch groups I’ve been too.

With the in-laws in town, I haven’t been knitting much but I have managed to make a some progress on my WIPs. So be sure to come back then and in the mean time, check out the rest of my zoo photos over here.