When we approached our road trip plans for the summer, with a bit of help from Go RV, we had a few places in mind that we wanted to discover. One of those places was Discovery Wildlife Park, just an hour or so away from Edmonton, in Innisfail. It’s a unique opportunity to spend the night and camp in the zoo!
Camping in the zoo is cool enough, but there are experiences you can add on to your camping trip, to take part in after the zoo has closed – including meeting bears, tigers and feeding a camel. For the reasonable price of $20/person, we were given the opportunity to have an after-hours, up close and personal experience with tigers, and for an extra $5/person, we had the opportunity to meet the camel, hear the story of how the camel came to Discovery Wildlife Park, and feed him.
I wasn’t sure about the ‘unserviced’ part of camping – because let’s face it, we’ve spent the last few weeks camping in a fully-loaded RV and have become used to using those features like running water, lights – and even a microwave for the times when the kids wanted me to quickly heat them up something for a midnight snack, but we brought along a portable generator – and of course had the battery in the RV – so it was just fine.
There are no fire-pits allowed in the park, but you can rent a propane fire pit while you are there. Since we were only spending one night, and had the outdoor kitchen to cook with, we easily made dinner while we were there.
The cool thing about the camping experience at Discovery Wildlife Park is that it’s a newer option for camping in the area, and not many people know about it yet. It’s one of those experiences that the kids are going to remember (that time we got to camp in a zoo) and even more memorable, with the fun add-on options for campers. For this reason, getting in and out of the space designed for camping was simple – the easiest time we’ve had parking the RV!
We booked the ‘big cat’ experience where we had an after-hours tour, getting up close and personal with the tigers, lions and jaguars. For the price of $20/person, we got to learn more about the cats, pet the tigers and learn more about their habits, their history, and experience the cats at one of their most active times of the day.
After we had our experience with the big cats, we experienced feeding Kumar the Camel. Armed with a container full of carrots, we all had so much fun getting up close and personal with him, before heading back to our camp site where the kids ran around until bedtime with other kids at the campground.
This feature is a part of a series that we’re working on to encourage families to get outside. We’ve teamed up with Go RV to explore four campgrounds in Alberta. To make it easier for your family to get out there and discover a new Alberta campground, Go RV is giving one reader the chance to win a week long RV rental to see what the RV Experience is all about.
