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Washington Park Zoo
Categories: Zoos, Party & Event Planning [Edit]
115 Lake Shore DrMichigan City, IN 46360
(219) 873-1510
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
3 reviews for Washington Park Zoo
This is a great little zoo. Perfect for a short afternoon with the kids. They have made lots of improvements in the past year - the kids love the new bear and otter exhibits. The entrance now has a cute bear statue.
The tigers are a favorite with the kids. They are RIGHT there.
There is enough to see (reptile house, primates, bears, tigers, zebras, lemurs, petting zoo...) but don't expect a huge zoo. This is a just-right zoo with lots to see but you don't need to spend all day here. It's only a few dollars to get in. A nice way to spend an afternoon.
They are building a new primate house so it should get even better.
You have to pay to park in the lot across the street but take advantage of Washington Park beach while you are there.
You can't beat Carolyn's thorough review, so I shan't repeat. I gave it the extra star for nostalgia. This zoo has been a favorite of mine for 50 years. It's a wanderable place, a great value, and right at the lake. I have many fond memories of childhood days where the monkeys imitated us, the bears ate our tossed bread goods, and we quivered in the reptile house. It's a must stop on return visits.
Just like I remember it from my childhood, pretty much. This is an old fashioned zoo, in a good way. The collections are mostly only mildly exotic, with the majority of the animals being ones an interested hobbiest could keep, which is kind of a good thing; the animals seem well cared for.
The grounds are WAY cooler than most zoos, with steep winding trails, hand-made looking stairs and benches, and sharp pointy rocks jutting out of cement anywhere you shouldn't sit, trails that lead stright up to unmarked dead ends. It has that cool old-fashioned danger factor which is extremely charming, and a lots of shady trees. It's not a large zoo, but the winding hillside layout maximizes the space, and makes it surprizingly fun to just wander. Wear comfortable shoes! Where Brookfield feels like a 10 mile walk over a level parking lot, this zoo is small, but with steep and twisty paths of hobbit-steps, up and down and sometimes at crazy angles.
There are goats and other pet-able animals in the farm area - the goat food is a huge rip off, like 3 pellets of chow for a quarter, but whatever. The other prices more than make up for it - brats for $1.75, candy bars for $.50 - that's cheaper than in my neighborhood! The bathrooms are clean too, and so is the picnic area.
Peacocks and peahens roam around loose, which my daughter loved. The Monkey Island I remember so well from years ago is not covered with maques or howeler monkeys or whatever they were, but a more modest number of lovely lemurs, lounging. Wonderful!
The grizzley bears were amazingly active the day we visited, running around and capering like mad, and coming up to spy at us through the glass. Impressive! The bears are a real highlight.
The reptile house is exactly as cool as I remember too, it's a little castle, shady and comforting after the climb to the back of the zoo (the whole thing sprawls up a steep-ish hillside) with a nicely varied collection of snakes, frogs, and lizards.
What else? lots of birds, including a bald eagle, which is always neat, and a cool-creepy buzzard, and people-sound-mimicing parrots, love that! Big turtles, cranes, zebras, one scary aligator.
The big cats are the ones that always make me feel a little sad about zoos, but the tiger looked happy enough - no enclosure I have ever seen has looked big enough for a big cat to me, but this one was at least nice, with lots of layers of cliffs and trees for interest, plenty of deep, cool shade, and a pretty gushing waterfall. I didn't see any animals (not one!) doing that sad/angry pacing thing on the day we visited, thankfully.
The otter enclosure is not to be missed! Otters are just so neat and playfully entertaining, and the cage has a great design. The tank is about waist high with glass above, and since you'd have to lift a little kid up to see through the glass into the top, instead of a metal frame on the bottom of the glass there is a big fake rock ledge you can just let them stand on. Perfect! But it gets better - there is a kid-sized plexiglass tube going under the water, so kids can crawl through, see underwater, and otters being goofballs like they are they immediately swim up and sit on the tube to gawk back at the kids and check them out. So neat!
(Although it's very awkward to crawl through that tube for a big fat decrepit adult like me, I highly recomend it. Crawl in there and roll over, hang out for a moment, forget about how stupid your legs look sticking out, and take a minute to groove on the otters. My daughter just crawled through and didn't really look up until I laid in there on my back just gazing out through the water. Then the otter swam up and climbed on top of the tube to hang out by us, and seeing his clever looking little claws and beautiful wet fur up close looking at us - it was magical.)
Nearby is a big otter themed climber with a rock wall and a triple slide, padded below with rubber fake-cedar chips (which are better than real ones, cleaner and without the arsenic) which could only be improved by adding a sprinkler. We were pretty hot by then.
Some of the big classic zoo animals aren't represented, no elephants, (I miss the camels!) although some of the enclosures are being re-worked, so who knows. Despite that though, I adore this zoo, more than the "big 2". It's affordable and loads of fun. We did see one animal I don't ever remember seeing before, a bintaurong, which was beautiful!!!
http://en.wikipedia.or...
They might have them at other zoos, but if so I missed them somehow. Here there are not so many animals, it's not overwhelming, but they make the same effort to include ecological and biological factoids about all the animals. I feel like you get closer to many of the animals here too. That and a lack of crowds on a May Wednesday made it extremely enjoyable.
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