After almost 4 weeks of daily rain, it's nice to see a spectacularly sunny day. Looking for a cheap adventure close to our new home, we head down the hill to the central valley city of Lodi, located south of the capital and just north of the inland port city of Stockton.
Micke Grove Park is a large swath of green, shady recreational land just off highway 99. After paying our five dollars for park entrance, we slowly wind our way around picnic shelters that are designed for groups or large families to rent out for their parties.
We find the parking lot next to the zoo and pull in. It's another five dollars each to enter the zoo. I think we hit it just at the peak, on a Tuesday morning with a few other people, no hordes of school children on field trips, and all the flowers blooming in full glory.
It's a small zoo here in Lodi. The main path that makes an oval loop around the facility is probably about the same size as a high school track around a football field.
We start off seeing a pond full of turtles, then a sleepy fossa...a cat-like mammal from Madagascar that preys on lemurs...and a few birds of prey.
There's a very healthy looking bobcat next to some red lion tamarins.
A large exhibit well away from the fossa holds several lemurs.
An indoor annex also holds some reptiles and hissing cockroaches from Madagascar.
At the far end of our loop, we see a very sleepy snow leopard in his large enclosure, walk by a closed aviary (closed because of California's Newcastle Disease outbreak), and a marmoset enclosure.
Before you know it, we're back at the entrance. It's an interesting and very pretty zoo. Very small, though, but definitely worth the small entrance fee.
Next door is Funtown.
This is a small amusement park that is open almost every day, year round. We could find no accessible rides or even any that would be feasible to transfer Tim onto. Mostly their just your basic carnival rides like a Tilt-a-Whirl and a small roller coaster.
We wait for the train to cross before we exit.
Back near the parking lot, we visit a very pretty Japanese garden.
Those blooming trees and flowers are making my allergies go haywire.
We see this Japanese bridge over the pond when Tim tells us the charge on his chair is running low on battery power.
Back in the van, we head to the nearby downtown and find Yume, a sushi bar and Japanese restaurant.
Letty has this brilliant plate of sushi...
...while I have the best bowl of pork ramen I've had since moving.
Tim digs in to this plate of katsu pork.
The day and meal behind us, we pack back into the van and head back up to the Motherlode to await our next adventure.
Darryl Musick
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