C&O-Day 4

The rain didn’t start until I was almost over to Will‘s this morning. That was about 8:45 AM. We had decided to put off our ride today until the afternoon and were going out to the National Zoo. Walking past the Capital to Union Station, it was interesting to me to see all of the men in suits and women in dresses heading to work. That level of formality is rare in Eugene. Once in Union Station, Will navigated our way down into the tunnels and found our metro train out to the zoo.

After a 15 or 20 minute ride, we disembarked and walked a few more blocks to the entrance of the zoological gardens. The rain had not forgotten us and was still keeping us company.

Since the National Zoo is one of the few zoos in the world to have pandas on loan from China, there was a lot of panda paraphernalia, signs, and branding as we entered the gates. So of course, the first thing we did is go see the pandas. Or should I say panda, as we only saw one. As you can imagine there was quite a crowd, but being early on a rainy weekday, it was probably thinner than usual. Since pandas live exclusively on bamboo, and bamboo has almost no nutritional value, pandas have to eat all the time. Which is what this panda was doing. Satisfied with our panda experience, Will and I moved on to the other exhibits.

we visited the bird exhibits in the aviary, saw gorillas in the primate house, saw naked mole rats and a slow loris in the mammal house, two big male lions lounging in the rain, and a host of other smaller cats. The seals were frolicking in rain and the elephants didn’t seem to care.

After a couple hours we had seen most everything, so we left and headed back to Will and Sinclair’s place. Our intent had been to go for a ride this afternoon, but the continued intermittent showers made that less desirable. So, we decided to go over to the National Gallery of Art. A quick walk through brief heavy rain got us there and we plunged into the world of art.

The national Gallery of Art is a bit of a labyrinthian building with dozens upon dozens of galleries and over 141,000 paintings and works of art. I lost Will almost immediately, but figured we would meet up eventually. It was amazingly fun to see works of art by almost all of the great artists and to see them in context with the peers of their time. Before I knew it a couple hours had passed. I got a text from Will about meeting up at the entrance. Which is what we did and from there walked back to his place.

Later we rendezvoused with Sinclair and had dinner together at an excellent Italian restaurant, La Collina. We all walked back through light drizzle and then I broke off and went over to my place. It was a really great day.

Until tomorrow, Happy Trails…