Monthly Archives: August 2009

The San Diego Zoo is our favorite place to hang out with some wild things. We live 8 hours away from the zoo, but have still managed to visit it over five times since my son was born. He’s seven. Needless to say, he’s a bit of an expert on the matter.

So of course, I asked him to help me write this post by sharing a list of his favorite San Diego Zoo activities.

1. Get some quiet time with the pandas. There are very few places you can see pandas in captivity, so it’s easy to see why this topped the list. The Panda Research Center is the quietest place in the zoo-making it one of my favorite exhibits. To help the pandas feel at ease in their bamboo-filled enclosures, a limited amount of people at a time are allowed to view them. The line may seem a bit long when you first see it, but it moves pretty quickly. Still, it’s always better to head over to this exhibit early or later in the day.

2. Feel the primate connection with the gorillas. I secretly wanted to put these furry guys at the top of the list because they’re my absolute favorite part of this zoo. I could sit for hours watching the gorillas go on with their very busy, gorilla days. I’m a bit jealous of the security guard stationed at the exhibit, because he gets to hang out with these primates all day. You can get a close-up view of the gorillas through large viewing windows, and, luckily, they spend most of their time right in front. I won’t forget getting such a close-up view of the the baby gorillas when they were first born. They’re a bit bigger now, and love to play around in front of visitors.

3. Take a trip through time at Elephant Odyssey. The zoo’s newest addition helps kids learn about how the prehistoric animals of southern California share a connection with their present-day animal relatives at the zoo. My son checked out the replica of the La Brea tar pits and played around with the life-size sculptures of the mammoth elephants and Sabertooth tiger. The stars of the exhibit, the elephants, hang around in huge enclosures but are really easy to see. Have you ever seen a dung beetle roll around a ball of dung? Well, you will at this exhibit. I had to peel my son away from the little window, he was engrossed by the busy beetles. I was just grossed out.

4. Soar over the zoo with Skyfari. This is the sky tram that takes you from the Children’s Zoo to near Polar Bear Plunge, so take this up to give your throbbing feet a break. I was so happy to have a moment of rest, that I forgot about my fear of heights and of dangling in little boxes from wires in the sky.

5. Bug out at the Children’s Zoo. There are many reasons to visit the Children’s Zoo, but my son spends most of his time in the insect building. There are over a dozen displays of insects-lots of cockroaches but no dung beetles.