Wildlife Sanctuary

Now that we're closer to Denver, we've made a point to spend most of our free Saturdays exploring the area as a family. On the morning of Memorial Day we made a last-minute decision to visit The Wild Animal Sanctuary that's about 40 minutes northeast of Denver. The sanctuary is home to nearly 300 lions, tigers, bears, leopards, cougars, wolves and other carnivores rescued from illegal or abusive situations.

We spent a couple of hours on the "Mile Into The Wild Walkway" observing the animals. The kids were fascinated with two lions and their huge barrel of water, four or five wolves who napped in a pile on top of each other, and a tiger perched at the top of a pyramid of massive cable spools. But the bears were by far the most entertaining. There were more of them in a single enclosure than any of the other animals we saw, and they interacted with each other far more than the other animals.