Zoo Brew at Utah’s Hogle Zoo

It’s been a very long time since I have been to our local zoo. They have been advertising that they currently have Red Pandas so I’ve been wanting to go for a while. Then I saw the Zoo Brew event. Basically during the summer they do several evenings that have alcohol and are therefore 21 and over only (yay no screaming children). So we decided to check it out.

Quick Details:

Normal Summer Hours: (Mar 1st – Oct 31’s) 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Normal Winter Hours: (Nov 1st – Feb 28th) 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Zoo Brew Hours: 6:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Normal Admission: Adults: $18.95, Children: $14.95 (under 2 free) Seniors (65+) $16.95
Zoo Brew Admission: $16.95. Drink tickets are $5.00 each and get you a beer or a glass of wine (I recommend you bring cash because they have people with tickets. they accepts cards, but only at 3 locations and the lines were long. They do have an ATM though).

See the Hogle Zoo website for current prices and additional information.

The Adventure:

After making our way inside, getting some drink tickets and then some drinks (which kind of irritated me at first having to wait in 2 lines for drinks, but it did make the drink lines move faster the bartenders not having to act as cashiers) we started wandering around. Like I said, I wanted to see the red pandas so that was really my big mission for the day, other than that we didn’t really have a plan.

Lion.

Peacock.

Peahens.

We only saw the peacocks and peahens, but apparently there are also, turkeys, jungle fowl, and rabbits that roam the area freely.

Bald Eagle.

Otters! Yay!

Oh he found something to eat.

I love the otters. We saw more of these guys at the Loveland Living Plant Aquarium earlier this year.

We moved on to the seals and sea lions.

There is another viewing area that lets you see them underwater better.

I don’t know if all seals do this, but the ones here seemed to really like swimming upside down.

They are fun to watch, but I do prefer to see them in the wild like I have seen in Oregon.

Then we moved on to the polar bears.

I was so distracted watching the other one walking around that I didn’t immediately see this other one sleeping right in front of me.

The grizzly bears weren’t very active.That's okay we’ve seen them in the wild and in the Wolf And Grizzly Center in Yellowstone.

They have started decorating for Halloween and it is awesome.

And finally the main animal I came to see, the red panda!

Ahhh!!! So cute!!! I want one sooooo bad! However I settled for a stuffed animal version from the gift shop haha.

Eventually I peeled myself away and we moved on to the Asian Highlands. First up is this pretty leopard.

Sleepy cheetahs..

Lynx’s.

Another leopard.

Turkmenian Markhor’s

Tiger.

Grey wolves.

Hey this drinking fountain looks familiar! I think it’s been here since I was little. And the magpies seem to enjoy it.

Which looks kind of silly.

Getting a pretty sunset.

From up here we can see across to This Is The Place Heritage Park.

Raven.

Sharp Shinned Hawk.

Turkey Vulture.

Barn Owl.

Ostrich.

Zebras.

This lion was roaring something fierce.

Huge gorilla.

Caught him yawning.

More of the lights.

I know all cats act the same, but it was still kind of neat to watch this lion cleaning her paws like my own cat does.

Wall full of bones.

Giraffe!

Zebras again.

Back to the giraffe. Wow. I knew they were big but it’s a whole other thing to see one up close.

With a long long tongue.

We decided it was worth the $5.00 to feed him. I am glad we did because it let us get an up close view.

A giant tortoise.

Well it was really getting too dark for pictures so we decided to check out the small animal house.

I forget what these guys are.

Really pretty squirrel.

Baby leopard.

The 2nd reason I wanted to come, the Pallas’s Cats. I didn’t know they had kittens! They are so cute wrestling with each other.

Finally found momma. Of course she is at the highest spot keeping watch over her kittens.

Bats! We seemed to have caught them at feeding time.

Owl. I think this is a Burrowing Owl, but I didn’t see the sign.

The small animal house closes at 8:00 apparently. So, even though it was the only place you could really see much after dark, they shooed us all out. We didn’t quite make it halfway around. Sigh. But we did see the Pallas’s Cats so I am pretty happy about that.

Oh, they are doing an elephant show so they are lit up a bit. They weren’t out when we passed by earlier so we stopped to enjoy them for a minute.

I thought cats are nocturnal, lets see them again. So back across the lit up bridge. This was actually pretty neat at night, although a little seizure inducing haha.

Well no luck with the cats. It was super dark up there. So, we decided to call it a night.

Some of the cool light displays.

One last shot of the giraffe and a zebra.

Well that was super fun. I think we will do it again. But maybe next time we won’t wait so long to do it. We didn’t want to do it in the summer cause we thought it would be too hot, so we chose the 2nd to last one. It wasn’t hot, but we sure lost light quickly. We did get a chance to see most of the animals, and all of the ones we both really wanted to see. We had a great time, and it was a lovely date night.