Field Trip Friday: Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary

Last weekend, we went to a different zoo!

The Folsom City Zoo Sanctuary is not your typical zoo.  

The animals at this zoo are rescued animals.  Either injured wildlife, or illegal pets, mostly.  

They have wolves, wolf/dog hybrids, and coyotes.  

There's even a tiger!  Tigers are my favorite.

The miner's shack was a timely exhibit for us, since we recently learned about the gold rush.  The sign told about the so called "miner's cat," an animal that would get into the shacks to eat all the rodents that took shelter there.  The shack is currently inhabited by skunks (behind glass!).

It was a beautiful day!  Sunny and nice, after all the rain we've had lately.

Katie, who is familiar with the Sacramento Zoo, was very anxious about this "different" zoo, and kept asking to go back to previous exhibits instead of going on to see new things.  It was a little weird.

The rest of us really enjoyed this zoo, though.  Jack, in particular, was excited to see wolves.

Folsom Zoo has several peacocks and peahens roaming free.  We could hear their calls before we even got in the gate.

Brianna had the big camera and took a lot of our pictures that day.

The raccoons were being fed, and they were lively and entertaining.

Folsom Zoo is home to several kinds of raptors, including eagles,

and falcons.

I liked the way they had deer roaming in a huge inner loop of the zoo.  They're "contained" but not caged.

The mountain lions were beautiful!

But it was nice to know there was secure fencing between them and us.

Brianna got this shot of a peahen and a peacock hanging out together.

The bears were huge.  They were active, which was a pleasant surprise.  One was playing with a big strip of bark, and this one was walking around.

This cat?  A wild house cat.

His name is Little Bear.  He squeezes into the bear enclosure to hang out with them.  So far, they haven't seemed to mind, and in fact, there's a picture posted of the cat almost nose to nose with one of the bears.  I'm guessing the zoo keeps those bears really well fed.

Just to give us an idea how big those big bears are.

Bigger than my tall boy.

Speaking of Eli, when we were listening to the raven laugh at us, he made an Edgar Allan Poe reference.  Proud mama moment.

She was having fun with my camera, so I asked her to take some pictures of me when we went to the park after the zoo.

Some of them cut off part of my head, but this one is okay.

 The park is literally next door to the zoo, which is really nice.

We ate our lunch in the sunshine.

The park has an Old West theme to it, with a covered wagon and a mini ghost town.

Even the teenagers played.  Eli and Brianna bounced and bounced on this thing.

I loved being able to point out the stagecoach depot and see how long it used to take to get from place to place.

Folsom Zoo was worth the drive, and they even have a Groupon special.  I want to take the kids to see the historic Folsom Powerhouse, too.  I could totally see us doing a few more Folsom field trips.


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