Part 1: A Review of Our Wet and Wild Adventure!
My family visited York’s Wild Kingdom in York Beach, Maine for the FIRST TIME yesterday. It’s a little shameful, honestly, that we’ve never been, since our son just turned 12 and our daughter is almost 7, and we live only about 45 minutes north up the Maine turnpike. But, we were all excited to make a day of it, so we decided to risk the predicted 80% chance of thunder storms and headed down on Sunday morning.
Parking at York’s Wild Kingdom was a breeze, with plenty of helpful staff to guide us right into our parking space in a nearby field. As soon as we had our bracelets, we headed into the zoo section of the park and were greeted with monkeys! Caged monkeys of all shapes and colors and sizes everywhere! My son was ecstatic, since monkeys are his favorite animal. After visiting the monkeys for a while, we fed some wandering ducks and headed into the bird house. This section of the zoo features several varieties of friendly birds that are free to roam with a netted roof over them. Among other things, there were fuzzy baby ducklings and lots of roosting doves in low tree branches that allowed my children to gently stroke their feathers, much to their delight.
My daughter had been begging to visit the Butterfly Kingdom since we arrived, so we went there next. We recently visited a similar exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, and she was excited to experience it again. Although we loved the butterflies at the Academy, the Butterfly Kingdom at York’s Wild Kingdom is much better than in Philly: larger, much more natural looking habitat, lots of fresh air (the one in Philly is very steamy) and an impressive collection of breathtaking butterflies. She was in heaven! One even landed on her back.
That all took a little over an hour, so we took an early lunch break. We grabbed our picnic lunch out of the car and sat at one of the many shaded picnic tables that are provided. However, the shade wasn’t necessary, as we watched the clouds grow darker while we ate. My children were very worried about cutting our visit short, and they hurried through lunch. There were so many more animals that they wanted to visit!
As we walked back through the zoo gates, the sprinkles started to fall. Within a few minutes it was actual rain. But we pressed on, trying to incorporate the rain into our adventure, stopping under trees briefly for shelter until the kids couldn’t wait any longer, then we’d visit another animal. We saw majestic tigers and lions, lemurs, and some very noisy macaws who were probably indignant at the wet weather too. By the time we got to the Deer Encounter (another section of the zoo my daughter was excited about, as the deer eat right out of your hand), it was pouring buckets. Most of the deer were (wisely) huddled together under a cluster of trees, and only one was willing to come out to eat the food we offered. At least I think it was only one…I had so much rain in my eyes that I couldn’t see much! (See my soaked selfie as proof.)
Then the thunder started, so we had to call it a day. Less than 2 hours into our outing, and we only saw maybe half of the zoo! And the rides closed as soon as the rain started. The only way we got the kids to leave was the promise that it was a “rain check” and we’d be back ASAP this summer to finish our visit. And we threw in the promise of a camel ride next time, just to sweeten the deal. So we will post Part 2 of our York’s Wild Kingdom experience as soon as we can go back! We can hardly wait to review the rest of the zoo and fun park.
…to be continued…
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