This thread has been extremely popular, and I'd like to thank everyone who has written a response. There have been many people reading my updates, and I've also loved receiving the private messages as well. It's nice to have some down-time on ZooBeat at the end of the day, especially after wandering around for hours in a particular city. I will continue to post comprehensive reviews as I venture across North America with my amazing wife, and so keep the comments rolling in!!! At the moment there will be a lull in the zoos, except for tomorrow when I visit the Montreal Biodome + Insectarium. Apparently around one million people per year visit the Biodome and its 4 ecosystems that are inside the same building...and the Insectarium is supposed to be the largest of its kind on the continent. Later on this trip there will be a new zoo practically every day, and so I'll keep on postin'.
One thing that I gather from many of the responses is that people are enjoying my reviews because I tell it as it is. I have given the best, worst and an overall portrait of each zoo that I've visited, without glossing over the bad parts. I praised Shedd Aquarium as the best aquarium anywhere, and also ripped into the barbaric Lincoln Park Zoo feline house. The only reason that the Toronto Zoo received so many responses is that there are actually ZooBeat members living there. I also reviewed Minnesota, Lincoln Park, Brookfield, Shedd Aquarium, Toledo and Detroit...but I don't think that anyone lives in those locations here at ZooBeat and so there was no one to worry about. Haha. My last comment for now in regards to the Toronto Zoo is that I actually love the way that the zoo is organized. The geographic zones (Africa, Eurasia, Canadian Domain, Indo-Malaya, etc) is similar to Seattle, and I adore zoos that are well laid out in sensible fashions. One of my pet peeves is walking through the "Cat House", "Bear Grottoes", "Pachyderm Building" or similar area of a zoo that devotes itself to antiquated settings. I always think that lumping all the cats together, or bears in pits, etc, is the old-fashioned way to illustrate the beauty of animals.
I have a few questions to answer from posts by Allen Nyhuis and others, and so here goes:
1- My wife Debbie is a wonderful person, and she takes 99% of all the photos on our trips. For our honeymoon last year we went to Australia for 6 weeks and actually managed to hit 14 zoos/aquariums/wildlife parks. So on average every 3 days we were looking at captive animals!! She really enjoys zoos but not even close to the crazy level that I've had all of my life. The zoos have already blended together for her on this road trip, and it's nice that there is now a bit of a break so that she doesn't get totally bored of them. If I were to ask her where the Regenstein Center for African Apes is located she'd have absolutely no idea, but she's extremely agreeable and the envy of many here on this site. I think that having someone to go along with on "zoo-vacations" is the icing on the cake for any holiday.
2- That itinerary that I posted is very flexible, as exemplified by us already adding on the Toledo Zoo and planning on skipping the National Aquarium in Baltimore. As I wrote before, we will definitely see the Montreal Biodome next, followed by the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo (probably), National Zoo in Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati and almost certainly Louisville. After that it depends on whether we head south and then west across the southern States, or go across the mid-section of the nation. Either way we'll be hitting plenty of zoos and a few aquariums, and will end up between 20-25 for the entire trip.
3- The list of 25 attractions that I posted earlier on this thread doesn't mean that the entire trip is 25 days long. The number of zoos and aquariums does not represent the length of the road trip. In actuality the trip will be between 7-8 weeks, and so between 49-56 days. We will be seeing other attractions besides just captive wildlife, or Debbie would well and truly not be able to stand looking at thousands of animals. We have already spent a few hours at Niagara Falls, and then the CN Tower and Casa Loma in Toronto, and walked all over downtown Montreal today and visited Notre Dame Cathedral. Neither of us are religious but the Cathedral is stunningly beautiful. If our motel isn't too expensive we'd like to stay for at least 5 nights in New York City and see many highlights besides the two zoos. There are other attractions along the way, such as the World of Coca-Cola in Georgia and the Citadelle and old-town of Quebec City.
4- If we do hit Georgia then I'd love to see Zoo Atlanta, the World of Coca-Cola Museum and the Georgia Aquarium. We plan to spend only the 2 nights there, and if we have time we might drive out of our way to see the North Carolina Zoo as well. But there is only so much time to get all the way back to southwestern Canada, and so sadly we cannot see every great zoo on the continent. Judging from my list we will still see a large number of famous zoos, and leaving a few high-quality ones off the list will be inevitable. The Duke University Lemur Centre we will almost certainly not visit, as 25 zoos and aquariums is already a long list of attractions. Just driving from Ottawa to Montreal we passed signs for 3-4 small zoos...but I know that I'd be disappointed to pay admission for such tiny, financially-strapped establishments. A massive zoo with hundreds of species or a small institution with only lemurs and a handful of other animals is an easy decision to make, and the larger zoo will win out every time on this trip. I might not be able to ever do this kind of vacation again, and so the big guns in the zoological world are the ones that I intend on visiting.
5- Seeing two animal attractions in one day can be done but it's awfully hard on the feet. Just strolling around the Toronto Zoo is over 10 km, and when we are seeing zoo after zoo the kilometers add up and I feel as if I'm training for the Olympics!! When we spent about 4.5 hours at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo we then foolishly decided to walk to the Shedd Aquarium, which took almost 2 hours. Then we spent about 3.5 hours there and walked halfway back to our hotel for an hour before catching a cab. In total that is 11 hours of movement...crazy day.
6- Driving out of our way and adding the Indianapolis Zoo to our itinerary is appealing, and we'll have to wait and see what transpires over the next few weeks. The book "America's Best Zoos" is an absolutely astonishing piece of work, and to possibly meet the co-author would be a real treat. My wife just shakes her head at me, but I have read and re-read that book on numerous occasions. I bought the book and read the entire thing from cover to cover months ago, and then before each zoo I re-read the entire review for that zoo word-for-word. Then we walk around the zoo for hours, and I immediately get back to whatever motel we're staying at and then re-read the review yet again to see if I missed anything. Each and every top 25 exhibit at the back of the book gets circled in pen, all the top 10 zoos in each category get circled, all the best zoos to see specific animals gets circled, etc. I make sure that I circle and tick off each zoo as the road trip progresses, and I'm just so thankful that the book was published before this holiday. Perhaps as the road trip takes us through Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio I can send you a private message and we can see about meeting. You never know, if it works for us and you're in Indianapolis at the time....I look forward to the possibility of meeting the famous author.
Next post: Montreal Biodome + Insectarium
