Tornado Belt Travels: OKC, Tulsa, Wichita and Springfield
Reticulated Giraffe - Oklahoma City Zoo
Spring is cruising along, and I've been making my rounds visiting wildlife institutions across the country. Back in early April, myself and a crew of college friends went on a wild trip to see 5 wildlife intuitions in only 4 days across 4 cities!
We started by driving early from Wichita to Springfield, Missouri to see the amazing Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium! I had heard a lot about this site from friends and they all had great things to say about it. It is a huge site, with a full sized Bass Pro Shop, an amazing restaurant alongside the great museum and aquarium. The aquarium section is pretty top notch, with some of the best theming I have ever seen. It houses many fairly common species, but with some real unique oddities like the Midnight Parrotfish mixed in. While you won’t see any major marine mammals or presentations present at other aquariums here, it really might be the most ideal version of a fish oriented aquarium I have ever seen. I would easily consider this the third best aquarium I have visited in the USA! We then drove down to Tulsa that same night, making for the longest day of driving by far!
The next day we got to check out the ever improving Tulsa Zoo, and I was very impressed by their new elephant facility. With a huge forested area and perhaps the best elephant barn in the country, it is a huge upgrade from their previous habitat. The Asian area is still top notch, and with so many Malayan Tigers, it made for a lot of activity. There was plenty of construction going on still, and I look forward to seeing the future of this zoo as it is on a real tear! On another note, it also has one of the best collections of rare species I have seen at a single zoo in a while. After a quick lunch break, we headed to the Oklahoma Aquarium, making for the second surprisingly good aquatic facility of the trip. While not a accredited facility, it had a good diversity of tanks and animals on display. I did see a number of habitats that were too small / overcrowded, which was a cause for concern. However, I would say overall I was still glad we checked this facility out, even if it is one I may not find myself visiting again. Getting to photograph my first Bull Shark here though was very fun. We then crashed a small family reunion before calling it a day.
The next day we hit up the great Oklahoma City Zoo, which I hadn't had the chance to visit since college. It was great to see the new African area additions, which were deep in construction when I had last visited. This is really among the best zoos in the country, with a strong collection of animals, many great habitats and diversity of experiences. The use of the old Pachyderm house into dedicated African small animal area was really impressive among the many changes. I really think that with a few more projects reaching completion, this could be in the top 10 zoos in the nation! We finished the night with a drive back to Wichita and hitting a bar with some college buddies.
The final day, I got to revisit the Sedgwick County Zoo, my home away from home in some ways. The many baby elephants was a fun change from the last time I had visited a few years ago! Not much has changed since my last visit, and it was a shorter visit to the zoo since I had last been there only two years ago (I also see myself revisiting the area with some frequency for a while!). It is still an incredible zoo, and while in a space where its rushing to catch up with a new elephant barn with all the growing babies, I look forward to when it can return to pushing onwards on its ambitious master plan.
Overall, this trip was a blast; am exhausting, ambitious and amazing blast! It was of course a lot of fun to visit some new sites, and revisit some old ones, but more than anything it was a great reminder of the great crew of people I have met over the years!
