It was a zoo- getting to the zoo

Yesterday was one of those gorgeous, sunny, at-last-it's-spring kind of days.

So gorgeous that about 10,000 people - including many New Jersey schoolchildren still on spring break - ventured out to the Philadelphia Zoo, said Bill Larson, the zoo's communications director.

Some of the crowds may have also been lured by a Flyers pep rally in advance of last night's game in Pittsburgh.

Kirsten Wilf. the zoo's communications manager, said there had been some road construction in the area also.

And all of that had traffic on the westbound Schuylkill Expressway backed up on all the way down the Vine Expressway and back to I-95.

"It was horrendous," said Robert Burnett, 70, from New Brunswick, N.J. He was waiting in his SUV on 34th Street for his daughter, her friend and four small children to complete their day at the zoo.

"It seemed like we were in traffic forever," Burnett said. "We were creeping along. Finally, I had to make a U-turn and drop them off at the gate . . . because people had to go to the bathroom and the babies were crying."

The four tots on the trip are 3, 2, 18 months and five months old, Burnett said.

Rachel Gorman, a young mother from "just across the Walt Whitman Bridge in New Jersey, was carrying her sleeping 10-month-old son Shane to her car. With her was her aunt, Bernadette Gorman, and a cousin, Kasey Gorman.

But the drive from New Jersey had been nightmarish, the family said.

"It normally takes only 30 minutes, but it took us two hours today," Rachel Gorman said. "By the time we got here, all the parking lots were full."

Shane was doing OK for most of the trip "until the last 30 minutes, Kasey Gorman said. "He was getting frustrated. He wanted out."

Though 10,000 was a big crowd, it wasn't a record-breaker, Wilf said. The zoo's record was a 70-degree day in February one year, when there were 17,000 visitors. *