Go on an African safari in southeast Ohio
A lone yellow oil pump stands out in a spacious, green valley in southeast Ohio, a reminder that this 10,000-acre swath of land was once drilled for oil and mined for coal by a dragline called Big Muskie.
But the land now known as the Wilds has been reclaimed, and most of the heavy equipment has been replaced by a collection of wild animals. Indeed, giraffes now move like cranes through the recovered meadows of the largest wildlife conservation center in North America. Rhinos, too, plow through tall grass, as do antelopes, zebras, camels and more than two dozen endangered species.
It seems like another world, but only because it’s so close to home in Columbus. For animal lovers and conservationists, the Wilds in Cumberland, Ohio, provides a bounty of adventure and education, as I recently learned while attending a weekend campout with my daughter, Rosie, and her Girl Scout troop.
The non-profit park opened in 1994 and began a partnership with the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in 2001. Options include guided safari tours, horseback riding trails, fishing ponds, mountain bike paths and zip-line courses on 2,000 acres of pastures and lakes. There’s also a 27-acre Carnivore Conservation Center, which houses African wild dogs, cheetah and dholes.
We stayed overnight at the Robert W. Teater Conservation Education Camp, which accommodates 48 people in four yurts. The comfortable and modern camp is available for school groups and families, too. Otherwise stay at the family-friendly lodge or glam it up on a romantic getaway at Nomad Ridge – high-end yurts for adults only.
Our guide, named “J,” took us on bumpy tours in an old school bus and led us on night hikes, where we called for barred owls and encountered a snapping turtle.
We saw that spots where seams of coal were removed are now high cliffs. Places that had been bulldozed and flattened are now meadows. Native aviary species have returned, making the area a haven for bird-watching.
The best part, though, was seeing animals we’d only seen at the zoo seemingly roaming freely in Ohio. Oh yeah, and petting a rhinoceros was pretty cool, too. “It felt like a hairy rock,” Rosie said.
For more information, visit thewilds.org.
The best places to play are those where you can use your imagination, as we did during a recent visit to the Natural Playground, a 10-acre space at Blendon Woods Metro Park in Westerville.
There’s also a teeter totter made out of two hunks of wood, a pile of limbs for building forts and fairy houses and a train made of logs.
Well before the first shovel of dirt was turned for its new children’s garden, Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens asked kids what would make the place a success.
Well-established as a premier floral attraction that caters mainly to adults, the conservatory, founded in its present form in 1993, now has the goods to make kids think twice about spending an afternoon tied to a screen.
The conservatory set aside $5.7 million to build the garden, which was designed by Terra Design Studios of Pittsburgh. It covers 2 acres on the conservatory’s 40-acre campus (an adjoining 48 acres owned by Columbus makes up Franklin Park) and offers 16 galleries all with unique perspectives on nature.
The garden will be staffed from April through October, so there’ll be plenty of regular educational offerings, such as a community garden that will allow participants to plant, cultivate, harvest and prepare vegetables.
Kids love rainbows, so the first thing visitors will see is a rainbow arch made up of 56 stained glass panels. It’s a nod to Columbus’ reputation as the “Arch City,” thanks to the metal arches that stretched over some of its downtown streets. In each pane, embedded crystals will sparkle in the sun, and rainbows will appear on the ground.
A highlight of the garden is a 150-foot-long sandstone creek built for wading when the weather turns warm. It includes a boardwalk perched above a wetlands exploration area, which is actually a small water retention pond.
One of the first attractions you’ll see after passing through the rainbow arch is a canopy walk, a covered walkway from which kids can spot a spotted salamander design in the concrete. Further exploration along the canopy walk will bring them to the human-sized cardinal’s nest, steadfastly weaved by conservatory staff. Nearby is a hammock lounge, hovering over a garden of plants below.
“Since the conservatory was founded 25 years ago, much of the experience has been confined to the building itself,” she said. “We do 500 educational classes and about 450 events throughout the year. All those things were competing in a three-acre building. We had a great need to expand outward.”
The 620-acre park opened along the Scioto River in May 2016. We recently explored its offerings and were taken by its back-to-the-basics approach. I liked seeing people tuned out of electronic devices and tuned into each other and nature.
