Calgary's zoo, like Edmonton's is way above average. Both are excellent in their own way. The Calgary Zoo has nice facilities with comfortable looking habitats. Above left is a picary (pig) and gorilla on the right.
Lots of landscape in the habitats not just concrete floored cages lake so many zoos. Here they also have to have indoor facilities for all the animals but have excellent outdoor facilities for when the weather allows their use.
We especially liked their aviary which is full of owls and hawks. We've never seen such big birds flying loose in an aviary before. They were so close and didn't seem to mind our watching from so close. When they fly close over your head it is a thrill.. The mountain sheep (goat?) habitat is an example of how intricately they make it like the animals original habitat.
To our pleasant surprise, the Conservatory is located in the zoo.
A nice fruited banana tree on the left. One of the many "flowering" plants in the conservatory on the right.
Some of the plants really dressed up.
It's nice to be able to have flowers all year. Just a great place to come for a spot of summer when it's cold outside.
The contrast inside and outside in winter must be stark.
And their butterfly room was wonderful.
70 years ago they had a wonderful dinosaur land on grounds where the zoo is now located. The sculptures were all concrete. Unfortunately they deteriorated over the years. The last of the original concrete dinosaurs is still located where he has always been. at 40-50 tall he would be difficult to move.
They did build a new, smaller prehistoric park on the zoo grounds. By smaller, I don't mean small, just less acreage than before. Prehistoric park. Now the figures are fiberglass but still big. The habitat on the right shows how detailed the area is.It is several acres itself.
Great zoo. We stayed until they threw us out at 6pm then took the train downtown. We had dinner sharing a lasagna and a slice of pizza. After dinner we went to the Calgary Tower, rode to the top and took a look in the daylight and waited for darkness for another look. You get a nice view of the city there. We were back to the mall by 9pm and returned to our campsite in the city near the Deerfoot Mall.
Wednesday: (09/21) McDonald's breakfast burritos for breakfast. We took the jeep out for a little drive around town. We stopped by the old Olympic facilities west of town. We shared an avocado bubble tea with pearls for lunch. We wandered around getting lost and un-lost several times. As the traffic was building up about 4pm we dashed home. We shared some Chinese food for dinner. Our late afternoon and evening were enjoyed hnging round at home. I worked on the countless photos taken recently to select a few adequate ones for the blog. Our light lunch with early dinner didn't last so we had some of Lou's beef stroganoff for dinner.
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