Ellery and Connor at The Wilds

27 July 2002

Today we made a day trip to Cumberland, Ohio. Cuberland is located about 20 miles southwest of Zanesville, Ohio. And that is where the Wilds is located. The Wilds is a different kind of zoo. It reminded me of Jurasic Park. Instead of the animals being in tiny cages, they are out in large fields roaming around. The visitors ride in busses through the park. Since the animals are not in cages, you are never sure what you will see. The park does try to keep certain animals in certain areas so that you might at least have some chance of seeing some animals. It seemed they keep the animals in certain areas by how and where they feed the animals.

Chambers on the tour bus If I remember correctly the tour guide mentioned the land for the Wilds is reclaimed strip mines. If that is correct, you can't tell at all that it might have been a strip mine. There were mature trees, ponds, and beautiful green fields. They have done a wonderful job reclaiming the land.

Fletcher The bus ride through the fields takes about an hour. On our trip we saw camels, rhinos, giraffs, bison, and other animals. It sounds like I will have to watch our video again to see which ones I missed. Going through the pictures I see I didn't take any pictures of the animals, only video.

After the Wilds, we drove back to Zanesville to find a place for a picnic. We drove through town looking for a park, but we never came across one. So, finally we stopped at a yard sale to ask about a park. The people there couldn't come up with any parks. I was amazed. Zanesville is a decent sized city. Certainly that had at lease one park. Finally they came up with a park and they gave us directions. However, they did warn us not to go there after dark.

Spencer Ellery, Spencer, Bradford, Donovan, Connor When we found the park, I knew why they hesitated so much to give us directions. It was not a nice park. I would be ashamed to tell people about it also. The park was along the river, out of the way where no one paid any attention to it. It looked run down and uncared for. There were few picnic tables, no park benches, and I saw maybe one trash can.

We found an unocuppied picnic table and sat down to eat. We were instantly bothered by a stray dog. It was friendly. But it was not one you wanted to touch. It was dirty and covered with sores (ticks?). We didn't stay long for lunch.

One the way back home, we stopped near Utica, Ohio where the Velvet Ice Cream factory is. There they have restored an old mill where they now serve their ice cream. They also give tours of the factory. The factory was closed on Saturday, but they let us look around anyway. I was surprised at how small it was. It doesn't take much room at all to make ice cream, I guess.

After an ice cream cone we called it a day and headed for home.

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