Lynchburg Series: Natural Bridge Zoo
After our trip to Dinosaur Kingdom II, our final stop for the day, on July 4th, was at the Natural Bridge Zoo. The zoo was directly across the street from Dinosaur Kingdom II, so we figured it was the best next place to visit while in Natural Bridge from the tickets remaining in the multi-pass we purchased at the Dinosaur Kingdom II.
It was hot, we were getting really tired, and thought this would be a pretty quick trip. Natural Bridge is such a small town it seemed like the zoo probably wouldn’t have too much variety of animals there. But we soon figured out we were VERY wrong! The zoo had all different kinds of animals, and you were able to get so close to many of them. It wasn’t busy at all, so we had the freedom to take our time with each animal. We ended up spending a couple of hours there.
When you enter the zoo, they give you a map of the property and send you on your way. We started by going off to the right where we saw some lemurs, turtles, and birds.
Then we saw a group of monkeys - they were all swinging around and looked like they were playing and having fun. It was hard to capture them since they moved SO quickly, but snagged a couple of good ones. These guys were tiny and quick!
After the monkeys, we circled back around the first loop of the zoo and saw more birds. There was a large walk-in caged area full of parakeets! When we walked by they were flying around and chirping like CRAZY - it looked like a mad house! We noticed there was an entrance for visitors to walk in and join the birds. As soon as we started to walk through the door, the birds got silent and all perched up on a resting spot. They were so pretty to look at.
Next, we went through the larger loop of the zoo and checked out the zebras, camels, goats, oryx, and more! They sold some feeding buckets, which we didn’t buy, but because the animals are so trained to come to the people (who likely usually have food), they would come right up to you when walking by.
The Natural Bridge Zoo even has an elephant! One some days, they offer elephant rides. That would have been fun, but he seemed to be resting “off duty” the day we visited the zoo, so we just got to see him from afar.
Towards the end of the large loop we came across some really funny llamas and a donkey, who we became fast friends with. These friends may have been my best “models” of the day!
The next exciting group of animals were the giraffes! We were so surprised to see such large animals like the elephant and giraffe at this small zoo.
After finishing the large loop, there was one more smaller loop to check out. We saw more birds, porcupines, and even a couple of tigers! A lot of the animals were sleeping or hiding, but we were still able to see a lot of fun different animals during this impromptu zoo visit!
At the end of our zoo trip, it was starting to get late and a storm was ready to come through the area, so we decided to wrap up our 4th of July day out in Natural Bridge. Luckily the multi-pass tickets are good for a few months, so we decided to save our last ticket to the caverns for another day.
Which animals from the zoo were your favorites? Let me know in the comments below. Be sure to keep reading to see where we went next while staying in Lynchburg!
