Maybe the one at the Academy of Sciences?
Favorite zoo: San Diego Zoo. I grew up in San Diego in the 60s, so that’s kind of my default answer. My best memories are from those days, when my parents let us loose for the day. I went to summer classes there and got to see a lot of behind the scenes stuff, getting to hold an echidna was a major highlight. In the late 90s I was a member of the Keepers Club, one of the perks was getting in early on the weekends and attending talks by the head keepers: more behind the scenes stuff and some great stories as well.
Favorite park, National: Devils Tower. I get a feeling there, I’d hesitate to say it’s “spiritual”, but there’s something magical about the place for me. Plus, I really like staying at the KOA just outside the park. The campground is kept up really nicely, there’s a pool, and they show Close Encounters every night on on a big screen.
Favorite park, State: Wakulla Springs in Florida. It has a great late 30s-era Lodge (with “Old Joe”, a 10ft former resident alligator on display in the lobby) , a nice beach area with a diving platform into clear deep water, and boat tours into the swamp that was a filming location for The Creature of The Black Lagoon.
Favorite aquariums: Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga and Wonders of Wildlife in Springfield. The Tennessee Aquarium was a must-see for me because it’s one of the few places I know of that has paddlefish on exhibit. And the Wonders of Wildlife…I was a little leery about it being sort of a “Disneyfied” experience, but the museum and immersive exhibits are so well done my skepticism vanished. Plus, it’s part of the Bass Pro Shop Headquarters complex with the mega-store and several extra museum galleries that are all free.
Favorite garden: Kew Royal Botanic Gardens The world’s largest Victorian glasshouses were the main attraction for me, but the whole place is fantastic.
I loved that place. And you get to drive through a saguaro forest to get there.
We got to feed giraffes from a jeep on a special tour at the San Diego Wild Animal Park (I think they’ve changed their name?), and the giraffes were so cool! So quiet, too. One called Ivan was especially tall and huge, and, yes, they would spiral their tongues around the carrots we fed them.
When we travel, we try to find gardens, both small and large, and zoos if they’re rated well for animal treatment.
There’s a set of enjoyable gardens in a complex with museums on the Seine in Paris.
Parque el Retiro in Madrid is delightful.
The gardens and parks in Sydney have great birdwatching.
We were on a cruise and figured out how to get a bus to a zoo in New Caledonia that was great. I don’t remember the name, but I’ll guess there aren’t that many zoos in New Caledonia. Large open-air enclosures for the most part, in a wooded setting.
The gardens/forest paths outside the Alhambra in Spain and Pena Palace in Portugal are wonderful.
ETA: I’ll get to Buchart Gardens in the next year. Longwood is also extensive and enjoyable.
San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park
Shedd Aquarium (Chicago)
Central Park (NYC)
Been to both of those and enjoyed them very much. I took one of my favorite photographs at Butchart Gardens. The log hut that Mrs. Butchart used as a supervisory post during construction looked out over one of the former pits. I was being hurried and didn’t noticed that I’d focused on the beam at the top of the window I was shooting out of. So, I got a very sharply focused log beam with a Monet-esque blur of colors beyond.
Also:
Benmore Botanical Garden (Dunoon, Argyll)
Ivan was quite the celebrity at the Wild Animal Park. To say he had an attitude would be a major understatement, he considered himself the king of the park. On the tour I was on we were treated to him showing Bucky the water buffalo who was boss.
That’s great! I just remember how HUGE his head was when it was looming over our truck. That was such a fun time!
ETA: My sister said to tell you that he scared the shit out of her when he came up behind her,
If we’re including national parks and the like, then:
Denali National Park: towering mountains, glaciers, grizzlies, moose, wolves.
Katmai NP in Alaska: living with grizzlies, hiking in the Valley of 10,000 Smokes
Bryce Canyon, Zion and Canyonlands in Utah.
Antelope Canyon in AZ
The 2 I was going to mention. I’m 90 minutes from San Diego, so I hit the zoo/Wild Animal Park/etc. every chance I get.
We take our kids on a rotation of the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, Turtleback Zoo in NJ and the NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx.
Worst zoo has to be Space Farms in Sussex, NJ. The best way to describe it is Auschwitz for animals. Except when I toured the actual Auschwitz, the facilities were better maintained.
Seconding Omaha Zoo. We took my son there when he was like 7 and were completely blown away. It was huge! And amazing! They’d just opened the Lied Jungle, an indoor rain forest. Huge! Amazing!
My son is 25 now, I need to get back there – I bet it’s huger and more amazinger.
San Diego Zoo Safari Park.
Hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars to rebrand it and everyone still calls it the Wild Animal Park.
ZOO: I was just at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago and spend 6 happy hours covering the park. Varied wildlife that are well taken care of and modern facilities, in the middle of a huge city. For smaller Zoos, I was impressed by the Knoxville (TN) Zoo, for a relatively small population (Metro area less than a million) it is lovely to visit and has a fine variety.
AQUARIUMS: Concur that Baltimore has a fine one, was disappointed in New Orleans, my memory was of a much larger and more varied population and I was through it in less than an hour.
PARKS: Yellowstone and Grand Tetons (two parks that abut each other) are well worth a week of adventures if you can afford it. Custer State Park in South Dakota is marvelous and I can almost guarantee you will get nice and close to Bison there (but stay in the car!!).
GARDENS: Not a big garden fan, but Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina not only has plants, but sculpture, animals, walking trails for some history and a great all-around experience.
The North Carolina Zoo is also huge - it’s state supported and has 500 developed acres, which makes it the world’s largest natural habitat zoo. IIRC, if you walk from one end to the other, it’s about 5 miles. The whole site is about 1,700 acres.
It is~here’s a travel article from last year.
Apparently the latest new exhibit to open is an Orangutan Forest.
When you come back to visit, let me know. I bet we can get @LH75 and his lovely bride to join us for a mini-Dope fest. He knows all the best pizza places in Omaha.
Gardens:
Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden, my local one (as in, I’m there at least once a month, more frequently in summer. Going there tomorrow, in fact):
Other local-ish one I love:
Harold Porter::
Aquariums: Our local Two Oceans aquarium is great, but Durban’s uShaka one is also good.
Zoos - I don’t really like zoos, but Berlin Zoo was OK. I prefer game reserves/National Parks.
There are many great local-ish ones:
Table Mountain NP
De Hoop
Rondevlei Bird Sanctuary
Wilderness
West Coast NP (absolutely the most spectacular flowers in season:
A bit further out, I prefer Addo NP to the bigger, more well-known Kruger NP
But my absolute favourite is Kogelberg Nature Reserve:
Thanks, and, yes, old names have amazing persistency.
Last time I was in City Park, there was a gator swimming in the lagoon by the museum. Even the locals were pretty surprised.
Also worth a visit is Jungle Gardens, a couple hours west of New Orleans, near New Iberia. As is the essay Henry Miller wrote about his visit there.