A Day at the North Carolina Zoo

This past weekend, we roadtripped down to North Carolina to celebrate Rowan's 7th birthday (at the zoo, of course - that girl loves her zoos). This time we hit up the North Carolina Zoo, and it was pretty terrible. If the Metro Richmond Zoo is the best zoo I've ever been to, then the North Carolina Zoo is definitely the worst.

The animal exhibits are spread out along a cement path that winds its way through a wooded area, which is nice - except that it feels like you have to walk a mile to see one exhibit and then walk a mile to see another. I felt like we walked all day long and barely saw any animals. 

It didn't help that there were bees everywhere - trying to get our food, trying to get Wren's baby food, trying to get in my hair. I hate bees. 

A Day at the Richmond Zoo

We visited the Metro Richmond Zoo a couple months ago, and it is seriously the best zoo I've ever been to. When we pulled up, we were worried - it looked super tiny. (We joked that we were at the zoo in "We Bought a Zoo" because that's what it felt like.) The parking lot was tiny, the entrance was tiny, and really, it is a small zoo - but that's what made it so neat! There were a lot of animals in a relatively small space, and all of the animals were out and about and being very entertaining. (It's not that the cages were small - more that there just wasn't a lot of walking distance between each exhibit.)

The coolest parts were the interactive exhibits where you got to feed or hold the animals. The first one we stopped at was the bird exhibit. It was a big walk-in fenced dome with tons of pretty little birds. We bought popsicle sticks with bird seed on the ends and held them up inside the dome for the birds to land on and eat. It was pretty cool, and there were A LOT of birds in there. Sometimes they would land on our heads or shoulders - and that was neat, but also sort of freaky - haha!

The other interactive exhibit was the giraffes. There was a bridge built up over the giraffe area where you could be eye to eye with the giraffes. We bought cups full of giraffe food and had fun putting the food onto their long, slimy tongues.

I would highly recommend this zoo if you're ever in the area - it was great!