We went to Brookfield Zoo today and captured a lot of incredible pictures with our cameras. First, we stopped at the Butterfly Exhibit, which I’ve been dying to see since I first heard about it. It ends in the beginning of September, so I was anxious to try out the cameras - all of them - and for Steve to try his hand at taking some pics, since I don’t think he’s taken the time to do it before this.

I was right about that; he hadn’t. He was surprised at what he was able to accomplish with his elph; I was thrilled at what I was able to do with both the elph and the panasonic lumix. Steve really needs a digital camera to take the place of his fancy nikon that needs film.

Here are some of his butterfly pictures:

One of the dark swallowtail butterflies rested on my cap, and I was afraid to move.

It was a very fruitful trip in that the butterfly pictures - and scores of others - turned out to be breathtaking.

Here are a few of my butterfly shots.

I was so taken in by the variety of butterflies (particularly the different types of swallowtails), that I neglected to take some good shots of the monarchs, but luckily, Steve managed to get a few pictures of them.

Well it looks as though I got more monarch pictures than I thought. I think all of the butterflies in this picture and the next, with the screen in the background, have several monarchs in the picture, but I’m no expert. Maybe they’re viceroys.

The butterflies were fluttering everywhere, which made me a little nervous, since I was afraid I would have an immediate response to brush one off if it decided to light on me - they are so delicate, it wouldn’t take much to kill one. Luckily, it only happened on my cap, and I didn’t feel it.

There was lovely music softely playing that matched the magic of what we were witnessing in the exhibit. It was screened in, and there were so many butterflies that we needed to step carefully, lest we stepped on one that stopped to rest on the pathway. They were everywhere.

Little children were there - very excited to see what they were seeing; but the lady that briefed us on how we were to behave said not to touch them, to step carefully, and not to pick the flowers because they serve as the butterflies’ food.

This little girl didn’t seem to be all that interested, and her mom was trying to have her look.

I think this is one of only two monarch pictures I captured.

There are tons of pictures; I took over 400 of them, which is why I have more to show off. Steve is now looking at a Nikon and a Canon Rebel; I’m partial to the Rebel myself, after having read reviews and shopped some; but the Lumix was in my price range, and I bought it used and then beefed it up with a 3x lens to popo the 12x zoom in a little closer for those long shots.

The monkeys’ expressions were a little bit eerie and they seemed to be quite interested in the parade of people walking by looking at them.

This one in particular struck some interesting poses.

Several people commented on just who was on display when he settled into this pose.

When we were in the tropical exhibit where the monkeys are, the gorillas were somewhat amusing. And the people who were talking to their children explaining what they were watching was even more amusing. One young man was talking to his kids, and said…”See that grumpy guy over there in the corner? I’ll bet he’s the dad. And it looks like he just got home from work.”

I have more, and I’ll take a look to see if there’s anything else I want to share.

There are a couple of funny stories to tell, but I’ll reserve those for a different post.

All in all, we got a little sun in, a little relaxation, and tuned the world out for a while.

As always, I appreciated watching young families and their little children - particularly when they had very small babies in tow.