The Great 2020 California Road Trip (4/7) – Zoos

We’ve been a zoo family since before we were a family. Checking out animals whenever possible is a top use of our leisure time. For this trip, we spent a good chunk of our budget on visiting two zoos.

Santa Barbara Zoo

When we noticed on the map that there was a zoo near our Santa Barbara hotel, there wasn’t much of a question how we should spend the next morning.

This zoo was so close that we walked there in five minutes. It was pretty compact, but laid out decently well with a good number of animals. Under COVID, we had to pre-purchase timed entry and were limited to just 90 minutes. However, nobody was there to enforce the time limit.

Modest entrance looked like a small train station.

San Diego Zoo

Obviously, Santa Barbara Zoo was just an appetizer before the main course… the San Diego Zoo. Just compare the entrances and it’s pretty clear that those two were not in the same league.

Hong and I had visited the San Diego Safari Park ten years ago, and this was our first time going to the Zoo. I can say definitively that we preferred the Zoo better, although the Safari Park (not open) had acquired some platypus recently that we wouldn’t mind seeing.

San Diego was hot. Most certainly unbearable for spoiled Bay Area residents like us. However, the Zoo had ample shade to provide a fairly comfortable visit. We hung around for over five hours and traversed most of the Zoo grounds. There’s really no doubt that it’s one of the world’s best zoos. We got really tired but thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and it was amazing that we were able to see quite a bit of baby animals.