Great Granby

Third time makes it tradition: for Sam, summer means a two-day trip to Granby Zoo. We considered making the long drive out and back in one day, to squeeze in other summer fun, but Sam’s blank look of incomprehension was our answer to that question—as though the very definition of “Granby Zoo” includes a night in a Granby hotel. And he’s right. With two loops of animals (Africa, South America), an amusement park whose indoor jungle training zone alone takes a good hour of crawling and bouncing, and an expanded water park on site, there’s no doin’ the zoo in one day. And besides, mama don’t mind the night off from cooking and cleaning. So, days two and three of our family vacation were all Granby.

This year, Sam has declared that his favourite animal is the giraffe, so we breezed by the zebras and on to the large area full of elephants, ostriches, and giraffes. He pretended he was leading us on safari, using the same invented gutteral accent he uses when playing “Italian chef.” Colourful jobs seem to call for odd pronunciations. The zoo was, well, a zoo … so it was tough to spend much time at any one viewing area without feeling elbowed out, but Sam barely noticed. We toured Africa, had a dip at the lagoon and visited the jungle gym before declaring starvation. Our concierge recommended a restaurant (“what’s family-friendly but serves good food?”) and we headed out with plans for a quick dinner followed by a nice evening swim in St-Christophe's lovely pool. We forgot that the French don’t roll that way. Quick dinner? Nonsense, monsieur. We dined leisurely, returning hours later to collapse into bed.

Next morning, after a 45-minute swim (mostly cracken/shipwreck games), we headed for the zoo gates. The first five hours of day two were clocked at the waterpark. Sam suggested starting out there—after all, who else wants to be wet at 10 am? Wise boy. It was a warm and humid day, but most of the park's gazillion visitors were nonetheless intent on some zoo touring before changing into swim suits. So we had the run of the Lazy River ride for over an hour. We sailed the route together on big yellow innertubes, squealing under waterfalls, laughing over the “rapids” and spinning each other around—and then we ducked right back into the line and went again. And again and again. On the last trip, we let Sam’s innertube go (we’d been rafting together, holding hands) to take his chances on the ever more crowded journey. He loved it, even trying to "lose" us by taking a detour behind a rock wall ... but the falls pushed him back on our track!

After a picnic lunch of turkey sandwiches and cherries, Sam took a small hand-paddle boat out for a spin on a small 'pond' and then he and Jeremy played together in the popular wave pool for a few hours (Yes, I took a turn, but sunning on the nearby rocks was more my style). The photo above is my favourite zoom shot, taken when Sam felt he needed rescuing from some of the higher waves, but this video shows them wading in for the first wave.



We took a peak at Hurakan, the newest adventure, but wished we hadn’t since the roaring red-eyed rock monster that whips up the mist and waves for the enjoyment of waterpark revellers freaked him right out. Another year, perhaps! We spent the balance of the day on the South American side of the zoo, pet some goats in the Little Farm, and finished up in the amusement park. After a quick dinner in the pavillion, we trudged back to the car (and, for the record, Sam did the full two days on his own [not-so-flat] feet) and headed westward into a beautiful sunset, following it the whole way home. Sam was asleep in 12 minutes flat, and snoozed on as Daddy carried him up to bed three hours later.

We've been to Granby. Now it's a summer vacation.