60 Zoos In 20 Days - Road Trip 2014

snowleopard

snowleopard

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On July 27th, exactly 3 months from today, I will be embarking on yet another summer road trip. My wife has graciously allowed me to go and she will remain home with our 3 young children while I go from zoo to zoo for almost 3 weeks. I've spent about a year of my life tinkering on-and-off with the itinerary and I've posted it below for those that are interested.

Past Summer Road Trips:

2008 - 30 zoos
2010 - 39 zoos in 46 days
2011 - 24 zoos in 32 days
2012 - 50 zoos in 50 days
2014 - 54 zoos in 20 days

Summer 2014 Zoo Trip:

DAY 1 (Sun. July 27th) : Drive 7 hours + Cat Tales Zoological Park (Spokane, WA) + drive 5 hours

DAY 2 (Mon. July 28th) : Drive 3 hours + Yellowstone Bear World (Rexburg, Idaho) + drive 1.5 hours + Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center (West Yellowstone, MT) + drive 1.5 hours + Montana Grizzly Encounter (Bozeman, MT) + drive 7 hours

DAY 3 (Tues. July 29th): Bear Country U.S.A. 8-10 (Rapid City, SD) + Reptile Gardens 10:30-12:30 (Rapid City, SD) + drive 6 hours + Bramble Park Zoo (Watertown, SD) + drive 3 hours

DAY 4 (Wed. July 30st) : Drive 3 hours + Roosevelt Park Zoo (Minot, ND) + drive 2 hours + Dakota Zoo (Bismarck, ND) + drive 3 hours

DAY 5 (Thurs. July 31st) : Red River Zoo 10-12 (Fargo, ND) + drive 1 hour + Chahinkapa Zoo 1-2:30 (Wahpeton, ND) + drive 2 hours + 4:30-6 Hemker Park & Zoo (Freeport, MN) + drive 1 hour

DAY 6 (Fri. Aug. 1st) : Pine Grove Zoo 10-11:30 (Little Falls, MN) + drive 3 hours + Lake Superior Zoo 2:30-4:30 (Duluth, MN) + 4:30-6:30 Great Lakes Aquarium (Duluth, MN) + drive 2.5 hours

DAY 7 (Sat. Aug. 2nd) : Minnesota Zoo (Minneapolis, MN) + drive 30 min. + Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium (Bloomington, MN) + drive 30 min.

DAY 8 (Sun. Aug. 3rd) : Como Park Zoo (St. Paul, MN) + drive 1.5 hours + Irvine Park & Zoo (Chippewa Falls, WI) + drive 2.5 hours

DAY 9 (Mon. Aug. 4th) : Wildwood Wildlife Park 9-11 (Minocqua, WI) + drive 3 hours + Northeastern Wisconsin (NEW) Zoo 2-4 (Green Bay, WI) + drive 1 hour + Lincoln Park Zoo 5-7 (Manitowoc, WI) drive 3 hours

DAY 10 (Tues. Aug. 5th) : Ochsner Park Zoo 7:30-8:30 (Baraboo, WI) + International Crane Foundation 9-11 (Baraboo, WI) + drive 1 hour + Henry Vilas Zoo 12-2 (Madison, WI) + drive 2 hours + Racine Zoo 4-6 (Racine, WI) + drive 1.5 hours

DAY 11 (Wed. Aug. 6th) : Shedd Aquarium 9-1 (Chicago, IL) + drive 45 min. + Cosley Zoo 2-3 (Wheaton, IL) + drive 30 min. + Phillips Park Zoo 4-5 (Aurora, IL) + drive 2 hours

DAY 12 (Thurs. August 7th) : Niabi Zoo 9:30-11:30 (Coal Valley, IL) + drive 1.5 hours + Wildlife Prairie State Park 1-3 (Hanna City, IL) + drive 30 min. + Peoria Zoo 3:30-5:30 (Peoria, IL) + drive 45 min.

DAY 13 (Fri. Aug. 8th) : Miller Park Zoo 9:30-11 (Bloomington, IL) + drive 1 hour + Scovill Zoo 12-1:30 (Decatur, IL) + drive 45 min. + Henson Robinson Zoo 2:30-4 (Springfield, IL) + drive 2 hours

DAY 14 (Sat. Aug. 9th) : Saint Louis Zoo 8-3:30 (St. Louis, MO) + World Aquarium/City Museum (St. Louis, MO) + drive 30 min.

DAY 15 (Sun. Aug. 10th) : World Bird Sanctuary 8-9:30 (Valley Park, MO) + drive 30 minutes + Grant’s Farm 10-12 (St. Louis, MO) + drive 30 minutes + Butterfly House 12:30-2 (Chesterfield, MO) + drive 3.5 hours + Sea Life Kansas City Aquarium 5:30-6:30 (Kansas City, MO) + drive 2 hours

DAY 16 (Mon. Aug. 11th) : Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park & Wildlife Safari 9-11 (Ashland, NE) + Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium 11:30-12 (Gretna, NE) + drive 45 minutes + Lincoln Children’s Zoo 1-3 (Lincoln, NE) + drive 4 hours

DAY 17 (Tues. Aug. 12th) : David Traylor Zoo 10-11 (Emporia, KS) + drive 2 hours + Hutchinson Zoo 1-2 (Hutchinson, KS) + drive 1.5 hours + Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo 3:30-4:30 (Great Bend, KS) + drive 2 hours

DAY 18 (Wed. Aug. 13th) : Lee Richardson Zoo (Garden City, KS) + drive 4 hours + Pueblo Zoo (Pueblo, CO) + drive 9.5 hours

DAY 19 (Thurs. Aug. 14th) : The Living Planet Aquarium 9-12 (Draper, UT) + drive 30 min. + Tracy Aviary 12:30-3 (Salt Lake City, UT) + drive 1.5 hours + Willow Park Zoo 4:30-5:30 (Logan, UT) + drive 4 hours

DAY 20 (Fri. Aug. 15th) : Idaho Aquarium (Boise, ID) + World Center for Birds of Prey (Boise, ID) + drive 10 hours home. Whew!

54 Zoos/Aquariums in 20 Days:

Cat Tales Zoological Park (Spokane, WA)
Yellowstone Bear World (Rexburg, ID)
Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center (West Yellowstone, MT)
Montana Grizzly Encounter (Bozeman, MT)
Bear Country U.S.A. (Rapid City, SD)
Reptile Gardens (Rapid City, SD)
Bramble Park Zoo (Watertown, SD)
Roosevelt Park Zoo (Minot, ND)
Dakota Zoo (Bismarck, ND)
Red River Zoo (Fargo, ND)
Chahinkapa Zoo (Wahpeton, ND)
Hemker Park & Zoo (Freeport, MN)
Pine Grove Zoo (Little Falls, MN)
Lake Superior Zoo (Duluth, MN)
Great Lakes Aquarium (Duluth, MN)
Minnesota Zoo (Minneapolis, MN) ****
Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium (Bloomington, MN)
Como Park Zoo (St. Paul, MN)
Irvine Park & Zoo (Chippewa Falls, WI)
Wildwood Wildlife Park (Minocqua, WI)
Northeastern Wisconsin (NEW) Zoo (Green Bay, WI)
Lincoln Park Zoo (Manitowoc, WI)
Ochsner Park Zoo (Baraboo, WI)
International Crane Foundation (Baraboo, WI)
Henry Vilas Zoo (Madison, WI)
Racine Zoo (Racine, WI)
Shedd Aquarium (Chicago, IL) ****
Cosley Zoo (Wheaton, IL)
Phillips Park Zoo (Aurora, IL)
Niabi Zoo (Coal Valley, IL)
Wildlife Prairie State Park (Hanna City, IL)
Peoria Zoo (Peoria, IL)
Miller Park Zoo (Bloomington, IL)
Scovill Zoo (Decatur, IL)
Henson Robinson Zoo (Springfield, IL)
Saint Louis Zoo (St. Louis, MO) ****
World Aquarium (St. Louis, MO)
World Bird Sanctuary (Valley Park, MO)
Grant’s Farm (St. Louis, MO)
Butterfly House (Chesterfield, MO)
Sea Life Kansas City Aquarium (Kansas City, MO)
Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park & Wildlife Safari (Ashland, NE)
Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium (Gretna, NE)
Lincoln Children’s Zoo (Lincoln, NE)
David Traylor Zoo (Emporia, KS)
Hutchinson Zoo (Hutchinson, KS)
Great Bend Brit Spaugh Zoo (Great Bend, KS)
Lee Richardson Zoo (Garden City, KS)
Pueblo Zoo (Pueblo, CO)
The Living Planet Aquarium (Draper, UT)
Tracy Aviary (Salt Lake City, UT)
Willow Park Zoo (Logan, UT)
Idaho Aquarium (Boise, ID)
World Center for Birds of Prey (Boise, ID)

**** = I have previously visited 3 attractions: Minnesota Zoo, Shedd Aquarium and Saint Louis Zoo

Zoos = 46
Aquariums = 8
TOTAL = 54 zoos/aquariums in 20 days!! (51 I’ve never toured before)

Lifetime total will then be 236 zoos/aquariums…..

U.S. State breakdown of zoos/aquariums on this trip:

Washington = 1
Montana = 2
South Dakota = 3
North Dakota = 4
Minnesota = 7
Wisconsin = 8
Illinois = 9
Missouri = 6
Nebraska = 3
Kansas = 4
Colorado = 1
Utah = 3
Idaho = 3 (one earlier on the trip and two at the end)
(I am also passing through Wyoming and Oregon – but no zoo stops)
 
What?! This is incredible! An amazing itinerary SL, and it looks very well researched too. I can't imagine the kind of intensity and the drive you'd need on a daily basis (besides the several hours of driving). For smaller collections, seeing three in a day is not unusual for me, but to have such a high turnover and an impressive concentration of zoos is astounding.
 
Day 3 looks like a killer! 13 hours behind the wheel, plus three zoos! And this after a day on which you'll have driven for 12 hours, and before one where you'll be driving for 8. How much caffeine will you need to consume to maintain that sort of schedule?

I think you're bonkers! (In a very good way).
 
That is very impressive AND well planned out but how do you estimate time of a visit for so many new colletions? What will happen if something in particular catches your eye? And how many of these collections are accredited? I know you have high standards when it comes to zoo exhibits so are you expecting the worst? :p
 
Trouble is you're not really visiting the zoos, you're just flitting through them. Unless I'm missing something then I don't really see the point?
 
Jackwow said:
Trouble is you're not really visiting the zoos, you're just flitting through them. Unless I'm missing something then I don't really see the point?
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Yes, but they're mainly pretty tiny places.

I may be doing it a disservice, but I'm sure Scott will be able to fully appreciate the Butterfly House in Chesterfield, Missouri, in 1.5 hours on Day 15, for example.

The bigger places do have longer planned for them - 7.5 hours at St Louis, for example - and these will be return visits in some cases, anyway.

As with all plans, I'm sure things will change en route, but I think this a fantastically exciting schedule....
 
To address a number of the comments thus far:

- I never drink tea or coffee but I do indulge in Gatorade to keep me fresh and awake by the wheel (plus the occasional soda)
- Day 3 is only 9 hours of driving, as it is a pair of zoos in the same city and then 6 hours to Bramble Park Zoo. After that I might only drive an hour more as I'm an early riser (5 a.m. every day of the week) and so I will likely hit the road in the wee hours of each morning. Some days I might just turn in early and do the bulk of the driving in the mornings.
- Around 50% are AZA-accredited but I've already seen just about everything out there along the way and so I'm purposefully only going to places that I've never been to before. I'm choosing to skip all the collections that I've already toured except for 3 fantastic ones. Minnesota Zoo was my very first zoo on the 2008 road trip and so it is due for a return visit; Saint Louis I toured for a good 7 hours in 2010 but it is a terrific zoo with 3 new exhibits this summer (plus Sea Lion Sound) and one of the very best in the nation; and Shedd Aquarium is my #1 aquarium and I toured it in 2008.
- Many of the collections are very tiny. David Traylor Zoo, Cosley Zoo, Butterfly House, Great Bend Zoo, Pine Grove Zoo, the Sea Lifes and a number of others can be toured by a single individual with no family tagging along in 45 minutes or less. I have a lot of contacts who inform me that if I can tour literally a couple of hundred zoos with a wife and kiddies along then I will actually have more time on my hands than I think this time around.
 
Jackwow said:
Trouble is you're not really visiting the zoos, you're just flitting through them. Unless I'm missing something then I don't really see the point?
Click to expand...

The joy of visiting a brand-new zoo or aquarium is something that enthralls me to no end. I've been tinkering with this road trip for a full year, adding and deleting zoos along the way before I reached my finished itinerary. This will be my 5th major summer zoo trip since 2008 and if anyone knows anything about planning such events it is me. There are lots of tiny places that can be seen in an hour or less but I'll get to explore them and collect maps, cups, souvenirs and still take plenty of photos. I'm incredibly excited for this trip and I wish that I could leave today! Many zoos even state on their website words to this effect: "the average visitor can see all of the exhibits in an hour and a half" and without my wife and 3 very young children I'll fly along with ease. I've already been to 90 of the 97 best zoos in America (according to the book "America's Best Zoos") so why not start in on the really little ones?

Besides, I have 3 beauties to tide me over: Minnesota Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo and Shedd Aquarium.:)
 
I've only been to 5 of these facilities so it will be exciting to read all your reviews and observations!
 
This sounds like a very exciting, but incredibly intense trip SnowLeopard. Are you expecting to see many new species at these places, or (given they are mostly small places, presumably with mostly common species, and that you have been to so many zoos in the past) will the attraction mostly be the zoos and exhibits themselves?

Are you worried about driver fatigue with the long hours on the road? Especially with no-one to share the driving with? I don't know what distances you will be covering, but I am always shattered after driving long distances (e.g. 500km+) in a day, and need a few coffees along the way to keep me going. On the other hand, driving alone lets you crank up the stereo and sing along to your favourite music without aggravating passengers.

Having said that I'm looking forward to reading your reviews when they are posted! Good Luck!
 
From Webster's Online Dictionary (italics added by me):

vacation: a period of time that a person spends away from home, school, or business usually in order to relax or travel

Of the two purposes for a vacation listed in italics, I see Snowleopard is wholeheartedly embracing the latter while blatantly ignoring the former!
 
I always chuckle whenever a few zoo nerd friends mention the amount of driving that I do on my summer trips. Before I was a high school teacher I was actually a bread delivery driver for 10 years and a good chunk of my day was spent loading stacks of bread onto a 5-ton truck and driving from store to store. I loved it and was paid well, but the hours and physical demands were tough. Teaching is much more mentally rewarding and I can't top the wonderful hours that I work and I cherish my summer holidays.

I've always loved driving and I can drive all day if necessary, so to be able to tick off 3 zoos a day this summer and explore the northern United States is terrific. On one of my road trips my wife and I travelled 28,000 km (17,000 miles) and while some people would regard that as a monstrous vacation I would personally do it all again in a heartbeat and I've always done 100% of the driving. Debbie has never driven for even a second on any zoo trip as her job is to keep the kiddies quiet...haha. This summer I won't be driving anywhere near as much as I have on past zoo trips, other than the first couple of days and the last couple of days as I will need to cover some ground in order to reach specific zoos.

Lastly, many folks from overseas simply do not realize how far apart geographically many American zoos are. By the middle of August I'll have visited almost 240 zoos lifetime but that total would easily be 500 if I was living in Europe. I have to travel far and wide to tick off my zoos but the zoo nerds of Europe can toss a rock in the air and it will rebound off a few wildlife parks in the blink of an eye. Germany alone has 500 zoos, the United Kingdom 160, etc. If I moved to a European nation I'd indulge in double the zoo trips, attempt to see my beloved Everton play live for the first time ever (instead of on T.V. every other week for the past 30 years) and my kids would never even acknowledge the existence of ice hockey! (slight exaggeration:))
 
You may be closer to 500 if you lived in Europe, but I don't imagine you'd save much driving time - in my experience US roads are far superior to European ones!
I again wish you well on this trip, and will be following as I have done since the original road trip in 2008! I thought you would have used the time your wife has generously allowed you to yourself to do another large scale trip and visit all your favourite zoo's across the states, but I cannot criticise your choice! :P look forward to reviews, discussion and photographs :).
Edit and off topic - You should join the Premier League discussion in the Zoo cafe Snowleopard, as Everton are currently enjoying their best season in years, despite, as I type, Arsenal winning 3-0 almost certainly ending all Everton hopes of Champions league football ;)
 
Looking forward to your trip, is there a reason you are not doing Brookfield and Lincoln park whilst in the Chicago area?
 
@Cat-Man: thanks for the compliments and I didn't want to go for any longer than 20 days as I will already be well and truly missing my lovely wife and 3 amazing kids and I told Debbie all along that 20 days would be the limit. I then spent hundreds of hours seeing how many zoos I could cram into those 20 days!

@Kiang: I've already toured both Brookfield and Lincoln Park in the Chicago area, but Shedd Aquarium is too good to bypass even though I've been before. Brookfield is a massive, all-day zoo and I could essentially choose a day there OR tick off 3 tiny zoos that I've never been to before and that is the route that I've chosen. Lincoln Park is a zoo that I'm not a huge fan of but then again on this trip 51 out of the 54 zoos will be brand-new for me and that was the ultimate aim of the journey. I'd rather see Shedd Aquarium and 8 other zoos in Illinois than a couple of big ones that I saw just a few years ago.
 
Great-looking itinerary, SnowLeopard. I look forward to reading your reports as you travel. Wonderful that the wife is letting you go. I'd want to go along or I'd be the one traveling alone.
 
snowleopard said:
@Cat-Man: thanks for the compliments and I didn't want to go for any longer than 20 days as I will already be well and truly missing my lovely wife and 3 amazing kids and I told Debbie all along that 20 days would be the limit. I then spent hundreds of hours seeing how many zoos I could cram into those 20 days!
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Cannot argue with that at all. Really hope you get to come to Europe some time, would be interesting to hear your (and any other zoochatter's for that matters) comparison.
 
This is good news. I have really enjoyed your past trip reports, just as so many others have. In fact I used them extensively to plan my own trip to California and Arizona last March. We can all be thankful to your very accommodating wife!
 
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