St. Louis Zoo Trip With My Daughter

In a previous article, I talked about field trips and how they enhance a homeschool education.  Today, I will recount a “field trip” that I took with my daughter Caitlin, when she was three years old.  I subtitled it “How to Leave the House with $25.00 and Come Home with $0.75.”

In the late 1990s, the St. Louis Zoo had a travelling exhibit of the albino alligator.  Caity really wanted to see it, so I took her on my day off during the week.  I figured $25.00 would be plenty for a free institution.

We arrived as the zoo opened and it was a beautiful Spring day.  If you want to see the most animals, go in the Spring or Fall on relatively sunny day.  Outside of some interesting smells, it will be a memorable experience.

We walked a country mile through River’s Edge to see a couple of elephants and a hippo but the rest of the exhibits were worth the pay off.  We went to the reptile house and Caity got to see her albino alligator.

She liked all the exhibits except for the bears.  One of the grizzlies snorted and she had a death grip around my neck.

Her favorite animals were the lions, tigers and leopards in Big Cat Country.  We rode the train around the zoo.  One of the train stations is right across from the tiger pit and it creates the illusion of being eye level with the tigers.  You don’t realize there is a twenty-foot pit between the wall and edge of the pit.

 So how did I end up with $0.75?  We paid to park.  It was a little under half of what it is today but knocked me down to just a little over $20.00.  Caity asked to get some thing to eat around lunch, so the two hot dog special took me to $10.00.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we walked through the gift shop, where Caity saw a plush souvenir albino alligator for $9.25.  Well of course, I was not getting out of there without the alligator, so I had soda money for the next day.

This field trip was memorable for us because Caity is actually my stepdaughter and her brother was born a few months later.  She was used to being the only child and I wanted her  to know that she was not going to be replaced.  I remember it like it was a couple years ago.

Caity is now a grown adult and I have not seen the albino alligator for a while (it was grey the last time I saw it.)  However, we still have the memories of our field trips to the zoo and our personal favorite, the Missouri History Museum.  Whether  your children are homeschooled or not, I hope you create some of these memories with your children.  God Bless.

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