I love spending time with my children. It is probably my greatest joy in life. For those of you who raised children, you know as much joy as they bring, there are times you feel you are among animals. Well, this past weekend, my son and I really were. He and I went to Elmwood Park Zoo’s ZOOSNOOZE. That’s right, we slept at the zoo.

Elmwood Park Zoo is a smaller zoo, about an hour outside of Philadelphia. Since the last time I was there (easily 10 years ago) they have fixed it up. I was pleasantly surprised how nice it was. Almost the entire zoo was redone. There were many animals, way more than last time.

The truth was, when my wife told me she signed my son and me up for sleeping in the zoo, I wasn’t overly thrilled. But I figured it would be a chance for my son and I to use the tent, which he is always asking to do. I couldn’t really imagine what it was going to be like.

After we parked in the free parking lot, I could immediately see the improvements. The walkways were EP Henry Bricks throughout almost the entire zoo. There were many new and contemporary buildings and exhibits.

We checked in at the front with tent, sleeping bags, etc. A young man came over and showed us a few places where we could set up our tent. My son picked a spot between the owl and donkey areas. I personally would have picked the monkeys, but it worked. We were told the zoo could accommodate 70 people for the sleepover, but there were only 17 on this particular weekend, which made it even more special. Once we got our tent set up and put everything else inside, we had some time to walk around the zoo and explore a little.

The first thing they had us do was gather in a building with everyone staying over, and we learned about three smaller animals: a pancake tortoise, a blue-tongued skink and a very large velveteen lop rabbit. We learned about them, and they had different things for us to touch.

For the remainder of the evening we ate dinner and got to meet other people staying at the zoo through various educational games. We also did a flashlight tour of the zoo and made s’mores by the campfire.

The next morning, my son and I realized we were sleeping next to the zebras and didn’t even realize it. Don’t ask how we didn’t see them. After packing away the tent, we were able to stroll around the zoo a bit more.

After they served breakfast, we had the opportunity to feed the giraffes. There were two parents and a baby giraffe, although I couldn’t tell the difference. The zookeepers handed us some lettuce, and we were able to feed them as their green drool (from the lettuce) came down on us. Ahh, the memories!

We spent the rest of the morning seeing more of the animals in the exhibits not available to us at night but now open. We saw the North American river otters; a two-toed sloth; an African straw-colored fruit cat; a jaguar; and, of course, my favorite, the red panda. We saw many others, but those were the highlights.

Before we left, my son and I just had to go on the treetop adventures, a ropes course over the elk. There were three zip lines, eight different obstacle courses and a 30-foot free fall. Don’t worry, we both made it back okay. After all, after going on zip lines over alligators (read this previous blog), the elk were not a big deal!

— Eli R. Shapiro, director of sales