Bearizona – The Drive Thru Zoo

     The battery life on my camera was fully charged. I woke up at least nine times in the middle of the night to make sure.  It’s always that feeling that you’re going to forget something in the morning that keeps me awake at night. It’s five in the morning and I know if I fall back asleep now there is no way I’m ever going to wake up later. So I slowly crawl out of bed, slip on my bathrobe, and make my way to the kitchen. I’ve prepared the items for inside my cooler for about two days – nit picking exactly what kind of granola would be best on a day like this.

     I’ve always been a fan of animals and not just the typical phase in childhood where when I grow up I want to be a veterinarian. I would build homes for squirrels when it rained in Chicago. A towel and an empty carton after Capri Sun were what these mansions were made of. Needless to say, the movie The Fox and the Hound is still the most tragic one I’ve ever seen.

     I first stumbled upon Bearizona online. The animal fanatic in me died and went to heaven. The website read: Acres of wooded land harboring wild animals that you could drive through? Sign me up. On the phone I spoke to a young woman who was enthusiastic as her high voice cracked through my speaker. She explained that it’s best to go when it’s cold outside because that’s when the animals love to run around and play. I checked the temperature for Williams and it read that over the weekend it would be snowing. I dropped everything I was doing and went searching for the perfect cooler. A red and silver midsize one for twelve dollars would do. I packed up organic granola with blueberry bits, Macintosh apples, and water bottles and let my fiancé take the drivers seat. I needed the next three hours to pick the perfect aperture and exposure on my camera.

     When you first pull up to Bearizona, you drive under a big sign made of synthetic boulders and fake howling wolves. I hope I wasn’t being set up for some Disneylike adventure where you pull your car onto the track and watch tranquilized animals sleep for the most of the day. We paid about twenty-five dollars per person for our tickets and were given instructions to always keep our windows rolled up. I knew the rebel in me couldn’t obey. This was about to be my national geographic moment. I kept the windows rolled down and soon the car filled up with fresh air that smelled like pine. The car drove over some grates, which were put into the ground to keep the animals, live buffalo, from being able to escape.

     Bearizona is a beautiful place that is anything like a zoo. The animals get to run free, in their natural habitat, with minimal fences and gates around them. The only thing that concerns me are all the exhaust fumes coming from the hundreds of cars that pass through every day.

     After the car, which now had mud and sleet on the side of its body, took it’s first left we approached a buffalo that looked to be at least 600 pounds. With matted hair that looked like dreadlocks this admired beast looked as serene as a sleeping baby. Its hooves were another story. It made bold and heavy moves towards the bundles of fresh hay and grass that were laid out for it to eat. I ended up with about 30 pictures before we made it to the next animal. Next we approached the wolves’ lair. Snow covered the ground and out of my window you could see plenty of wolf tracks. I used my detective skills to follow them and as soon as I looked up, three wolves were running around and playing with their fangs out. You could almost immediately tell the pack leader from the others. Here I was, half of my body hanging out the window thinking they were dogs. They seemed at peace. They played around like they were at home, roaming the land like it was theirs, not pacing back and forth like they would in a zoo.  If it weren’t for the occasional glimpse of the chain link fence in the background, I’d think I was really out in the wild.

     You pass through a few more types of wild animals before you get to the bears. Among those are some loud species of goats with a hearty appetite chewing on everything in the forest, endangered white buffalo, and some sleepy donkeys.  I was ready to see why they called this place Bearizona. At first, I thought we may have arrived too early and the bears would still be sleeping. I hadn’t seen any since we entered the bear grounds and I was starting to worry. The pamphlet said they had at least 15 bears roaming freely and urged that you keep your windows rolled up. As I was looked up and out the window, about twenty feet away, laid a big black bear basking in the sun. I wondered how people could call them vicious – this guy looked like a teddy bear. I zoomed in with my camera and looked at his paws. Oh my! Those were definitely at least four times the size of my hand. I broke the rules and rolled the window down. I attached my extreme zoom lens and allowed myself about two minutes of photography time with the bears. About a minute into my photo shoot with the bears, a car pulled behind us. At that point, you’re politely supposed to keep driving, slowly, and we inched the car up just a bit. My fiancé was never an animal lover like I was. He had no problem opening his front door and letting his dogs run away when he no longer wanted them. He didn’t understand the point of just trying to sit and admire the animals so he hit the gas and zipped off.

     Not all of the zoo was frozen over though. After the bear exhibit you could park your car in a dirt parking lot and exit your car to walk around a more typical zoo. This is where they kept animals that would slowly be introduced into the drive thru zoo.  I found myself at another habitat filled with wolves. Wolves are my favorite domestic animal and here they were just a few feet in front of me. They were all different colors. Not just the typical grey wolf howling into the moon that you normally think of. A beautiful female was lying on the ground with a dirty white coat. She looked so peaceful, like a dog after a long walk, lying on the living room floor watching her owner walk around. This time, the owner was the camera. She seemed to flirt with it too. To get her attention, I would scratch my shoe against the rough concrete and make a weird sound. She approached the fence, and then plopped down and started to ignore me. I made an awkward sound with my mouth and she threw her head over her shoulder and it was almost as if she looked through my camera. I looked to my right, and almost as if he was blending in with the background, a big grey wolf with fierce yellow eyes made himself known to me. He let out a long howl that made my shoulders sink in closer to my body. He got the attention of another wolf as he slowly turned his head to look over at him.

     Here I was, lying on the ground at the zoo, trying to get the perfect picture of these wolves. My fiancé was embarrassed and started slowly kicking my shoe to get up. He wouldn’t complain when he saw my pictures though.

     We ended our walk through the zoo with a final few snapshots of an arctic fox, which looks a lot like on of my dogs at home, Sega, and a pretty curious raccoon. It seemed like the reoccurring theme of the day was that all of the animal wanted their pictures taken. None of them were camera shy and never ran away when people approached. I felt like this meant the staff at Bearizona was doing a good job getting them acclimated with the visitors. Although I broke a few rules, and it took about three hours to get there from North Scottsdale, it was definitely worth the trip and I knew I’d be coming here at least once a year. Next time though, it would be in late spring – when all of the baby animals are born and let out into the “wild.”