A Weekend Trip

Joshua had meetings in South Bend, Indiana last weekend so the kids and I decided to tag along. It was only a 3 hour drive and since the hotel, gas and Joshua's meals were expensed to the company, it was a cheap trip. We left Thursday after Joshua got off work and arrived around 8:30 pm. We stayed at the "Marriot Riverfront Hotel" in the middle of downtown South Bend and right next to the St. Joseph River. Our room had a beautiful view of the river. When we arrived, it was still light outside so after checking into the hotel, we walked across the street to a nearby park and boardwalk beside the river. The kids had fun running around. The next day, Josh had meetings all morning so I took the kids to the hotel's indoor swimming pool while we waited for him to get done. We spent the rest of the day looking around South Bend.

First, we took a trolley ride to take a look at the downtown area and had lunch at one of our favorite sandwich places---"Jimmy Johns". Then we went to the Potawatomi Zoo. It was a small zoo but super cute. We loved that it allowed us to get up close and personal with a lot of the animals. The cages were right in front of us, like the lions, tigers and leopards. We've never seen them so close before in any other zoo. Some didn't even have a cage like the great grey kangaroos, emu and wallaby on the "Australian Walkabout" portion of the zoo. We were able to walk on a path right next to them, but weren't allowed to leave the path. The kangaroos stayed probably 20 feet away from us but it was still really cool to be so close with no fence between us. The hard part was keeping Logan at bay. I held his hand most of the time because you never know with my little Loggie. He is sometimes unpredictable. He wasn't happy when I told him he'd be holding my hand while on the path. He tried reasoning with me saying, "I won't go talk to the kangaroos, Mommy - I'll stay with you." I wasn't sure I wanted to make that bet!

Our favorite was the Red Panda. There were two of them climbing a tree right in front of us. We got one's attention by making silly noises and he came right up to the 4 ft. glass between us. Joshua put a long stick over the edge and he grabbed it and gnawed for a while. The kids loved it! We could've watched the pandas all day. They were fun!

On Saturday, we checked out of our hotel and went to St. Joseph, Michigan. It's a really cute, touristy town with one of Michigan's oldest lighthouses on the lakeshore. We've heard from friends that the town and beach were really fun so we thought we'd check it out on the way home. We spent several hours on the beach and took a walk out to the pier to look at the old lighthouse.

Overall, we had a fun weekend. Check out our pictures below ---