Before it all began...

A long time ago in a town far far away.

There are two travelers who are about to start a new journey, much like the one before, but different in every way. But before the new journey could begin, an old journey had to end. The two travels knew they had to pack in as much as was possible within the next two months with as little budget as possible so that eating could happen during and after the trip.

So to begin with Andrea wanted to complete the second of two expensive activities that the National Aviary had on their regular schedule. But being a once in a lifetime event, how could we say no to it. The first we had done a year or so ago, "Breakfast at the Aviary" (or something like that) where we got a breakfast, a meeting with a few birds up and close, a tour of most of the facilities and a "free" pass to the rest of the aviary after it was all done. We had a blast doing it, but knew there was a bigger and better event for Andrea to experience. So after a bit of convincing that the cost of going to the Aviary was a bit less than trying to get down to Antarctica she was finally convinced. This time we went for something a little more special. This time we signed up for the Penguin Connection. More on that in a sec.

Our encounter was setup for something like 1:00 or around there. We knew we would be there for a few hours, so we figured we should start with some lunch. Although we didn't know they had a hot dog stand in front of the Aviary at the time, who would want a hot dog when they can have the BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD!!!!! 

We had seen Lucy's stand for 3 years and new it was time to partake in one of her Banh Mi sandwiches before we lost the opportunity to... so we did... and it was Fantastic. If you are ever in the Strip District around lunch (or any time that she happens to be there) I would highly suggest trying one at least once.



So back to the main event. We knew they were building a new penguin exhibit and I had kind of been convincing Andrea to wait on going to the Aviary again for both the right time to visit again and for the new penguin exhibit to be open so that we could get our fullest enjoyment of the visit. Well it just so happened that the new enclosure opened towards the beginning of the year and we were moving soon... it was like the planets had aligned, for Andrea. So, the event was setup to bring you first to the new penguin exhibit, show you around the facility again (meal prep, food storage, super-worms... you know... the usual) and finishing up with a 1 on 8ish visit with our very own penguin envoy.

We were able to see him, have him walk among us and even pet him for the duration that he would stand in front of each person. It was incredible and well worth the investment (both to have fun with penguins and not have to take a trip to South America to start with.) Out best pictures of both visits are on the web. So a good time were had by all!

That's it for this post... next post will be a here and now post as we will be mixing in stuff that's going on now with trip posts until we can catch up. Also click here to see the rest of the photos from our Aviary Trip.

I'll see you where the roads meet.