Saturday we decided to visit Racine Zoo since it had been four years since our first and only visit. I knew from checking their site that they were doing their own Boo at the Zoo, but I didn’t know that meant the zoo was opening an hour later than usual. The Boo at the Zoo hours are listed as 10-1 but they didn’t close at 1 pm so why would I expect the opening time be any later than 9 am like usual? No wonder we got parking directly in front of the zoo at almost 9:30 am. I’m just glad we were “running late” and didn’t have to stand around a full hour. I also don’t understand why when we first approached the ticket window the girl asked if we were there for Boo at the Zoo; when I said no we were still told they weren’t opening until 10 am. Sooo… why did it matter why we were there?
Since the zoo is right on Lake Michigan we walked down by the lake for a bit to kill some time. By the time we went back to the zoo to stand in line there were tons of kids in their cute little costumes impatiently waiting to get in.
Unfortunately the zoo is even crappier than I remember. Sure, it’s small, but what makes it crappy is how spread out everything is with not much to see. They raised their admission prices (although we got in free due to a reciprocal deal with our local zoo) yet haven’t done anything in the last four years to make the zoo more appealing. Maybe they can’t afford to add additional exhibits (though they definitely have the space), but they had even less animals on display than four years ago. The fennec fox exhibit was gone and there were like three kangaroos in the spot where I swear there were many more. Look, one of them was even dead and rigor mortis was already setting in!
I kid, I kid! He was just enjoying a little nap.
The thing I loved most about this zoo last time we visited was how the meerkat and penguin exhibits were designed. The meerkats are just funny little guys and I got some pics of them peering up at us.
I was disappointed to see the penguins were off exhibit which was ironic considering the fact that the zoo’s idea of decorating for Halloween was to paint penguins on some pumpkins around the park.
That was the extent of the decorating and it was super disappointing. We ended up visiting for only an hour and that’s only because we spent a good twenty minutes watching the lion cubs playing, which was the only redeeming part of our visit.
The photos would have come out better had I not been shooting through dirty plexiglass with some crazy reflections, but what can you do? As soon as we walked away all the little cubs got right up against the glass too. Figures! We walked back over but I couldn’t get any photos because all the kids were crowding around where they were hanging out, but I did get a nice up-close pic of the lioness.
We headed over to Wells Brothers pizza for lunch and really enjoyed their crispy thin-crust pizza, then to Harbor Park in Kenosha just to walk around a bit. I thought this sculpture was rather cool.
