Travels with Children

The following post was authored by Jonah Lisa of The Toby Show.

• 2155 County Road 2008, Glen Rose, Texas 76043
• For more information call 254-897-2960 ext 213 or 1-888-346-6282, or visit www.fossilrim.org
• Open daily.  March through October from 8:30am-5:30pm, November through February from 8:30am-3:30pm
• Visit website for detail.  Admissions vary depending on Weekend, Weekday and peak season from $12.20 to around $20 per adults.  Lower pricing for seniors and kids under 12 and Wednesdays are discount days.
• There’s no walking necessary; you visit this park in your car.  The petting zoo area has dirt trails but no stairs so accessibility is fine.  Anybody remember Lion Country Safari?  We had them when I grew up in Texas and my family went often.  You rode around in an open jeep painted like a zebra and fed animals in a kind of open zoo.  I loved it as a child.  On our big, month-long, family trip to Texas this past spring we got to visit a similar kind of park in Glen Rose, Texas.  Much more conservation minded and animal-focused (as opposed to visitor-focused), The Fossil Rim Wildlife Park was really a fun.

You start off at the visitor center where you buy tickets, get a map and buy a paper bag of “food” (some sort of compressed pellet) to feed the animals out of your car window.  A bag of food costs $7.95 and we got by with just one.  A family with multiple kids would do well to buy at least 2 bags to cut down on backseat squabbling .

There are about 40 species of exotic, threatened and endangered animals roaming freely over the 1,800 acres of the park.  I’d say at least half of those are various varieties of hooved, deer-type creatures.  Besides those, the park also has giraffes, zebras, Cheetahs (enclosed), cranes, rhinos, oryx, emus, ostriches & wolves (also enclosed).

Because the animals have mostly free-range of the entire conservancy, you don’t identify them by a map in a certain order like at a zoo.  With older kids, that makes identification of different species a real challenge and learning experience.  Make sure everyone in your party gets their very own Animal Identification Guide from the Visitor Center.  The drive is only about 10 miles but they suggest 2-3 hours.  It took us about 2 hours to do the whole park with one toddler.

If you have a larger party, it might also be worth it to you to do a Guided tour instead of self-guided in your own car.  There are special roads open only to guided tours that go closer to graving areas, plus I’m sure you get lots of interesting information about each species.  We definitely saw some guided tours getting to feed the animals much closer (I think they may have had better food too!) than we were able to get.  At the Children’s Animal Center in the middle of the park, there’s a petting zoo where the kids can brush goats, and touch giant tortoises.  This mid-point also included picnic tables and a small cafe.  It’s a great stop to break up the drive, let everyone stretch their legs and visit the restroom.  It’s also where the wolf and oryx enclosures are located.

Once we had our little break it was back in the car for more animals.  For the most part, feeding the animals consists of tossing the pellets out toward the animals until they more a little closer.  Some of them get the concept of where the food is coming from faster than others.  The deer came closer than anything else, until we got to the end and saw the ostriches.  BE WARNED:  THE OSTRICHES ARE AGGRESSIVE EATERS!  They will stick their heads right in your car and peck.  Just roll up the windows as soon as you see them and start from there to your own comfort level.  I have no pictures of the ostriches because they put us in such a defensive position.  It was just a scramble to get the windows up fast enough without getting pecked.  Still, it was funny and exciting.  And remember, as with zoos, the animals will be more active in the morning than in the full heat of the day.

This was an all around fun family trip and though we didn’t do this ourselves you should also hit the Glen Rose Dinosaur Valley State Park for lots of cool geologic features and dinosaur footprints.

If you’re planning to head to an apple orchard this fall, see my post at Uptake.com on visiting orchards with kids.

When I have a free day with the kids, I usually want to go somewhere.  But where to go?  Sure, some of the places are well-known and popular, but when I want to go somewhere different, I have an arsenal of sources to give me ideas.

I have seven or eight local interest/travel books that live in the car (until my husband cleans a little too well, at least).  Books like “Oddball Minnesota,” “Minnesota Museums,” and ”Off the Beaten Path” are great to keep in the car so I can plan a great adventure while we’re on the way.  Going to the Kelley Farm in Elk River?  I check the books to see if there’s anything else interesting nearby.

Our local paper has a weekend calendar that it publishes each Friday.  Plays, concerts, community festivals, and more are included in the calendar.  It’s a nice way to find things to do that are close to home.  Likewise, there are segments on news stations like “Finding Minnesota” and “Trip on a Tankful” that point out interesting destinations.

I have memberships to the Minnesota Children’s Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society, and their membership mailings include special events.  I mark any that look interesting on my calendar, just in case we’re free to take advantage of them.

Online, I check out a few websites regularly.  The Museum Adventure Pass website has led me to some new places, with the advantage of free admissions from the library.  Playtime Plan-It has ideas for outings and more in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area.  My favorite is GoCityKids, where I can enter a date on their events calendar and have a list of family-friendly happenings, complete with age recommendations, that range from storytimes to museum exhibits to theater productions.  I use the Minneapolis/St. Paul GoCityKids site, but it’s also available for several other metropolitan areas.

Generic searches, such as “free museums Minnesota” have turned up some gems.

If we’re traveling farther from home, I try to plan ahead enough to request a visitor’s information packet from the local convention and visitor’s bureau, which can take 3-6 weeks to arrive.  I visit as many websites as I can before we go, and take printouts from locations on our “might-do” list.  I browse brochure racks at museums and hotels.  If possible, I take a laptop computer so I can get additional information at our destination.

My latest tool is a portable GPS unit for the car.  It’s been helpful in navigating to new places, especially when I’m without a human navigator in the vehicle, and it also includes phone numbers for many points of interest so I can call to check on hours, admission rates, etc.

Do you have any ideas for finding places to visit with your kids?  Please leave a comment!