I need a holiday to blow you all away

[baratron]

I feel awful. Woke up after about 6.5 hours sleep and couldn't get back to sleep. Richard has booked a week off work (!!) from 15th-19th September so I am supposed to be finding somewhere to go for some or all of it.

I want to go on holiday somewhere that is Not Here, and ideally in another country altogether. I would like to combine this with viewing of Bears and/or Wolves. That is about the best I am capable of in my current state of brain.

Richard would quite like to have some time at home to Tidy Up His Workshop, although that doesn't have to be in that week.

We don't have very long in which to figure out where we're going.

I was looking at Ely in Minnesota, because it is where both the North American Bear Center AND the International Wolf Center are, but it looks like there is absolutely no way to get around without a car. Actually, I can't even figure out how to get there from the nearest airport (Duluth), 115 miles away!

I am not good at adjusting from European city geography to middle of nowhere tiny North American town geography. (Seriously, a town with less than 4,000 people has two newspapers? That just breaks my brain!) Also, there is almost certainly nowhere near enough time to arrange something as complicated as that.

Which means either somewhere in Europe, or a major city in North America. Although I'm not aware of lots of bears and/or wolves around major cities in North America, with the exception of Toronto Zoo. Hrm.

Anyone have any smart ideas?

Comments

[redbird]

If zoos will do, a lot of North American cities fit the bill; the Bronx Zoo has brown bears, polar bears, and wolves, for example.

(It looks as though the North Country Angler is a specialty supplement to the Ely Echo; I poked around because I was also startled by a town that size with two newspapers, given that Seattle is down to one that actually has a print issue.)

[jenett]

We have two different county newspapers, but.

The Minnesota Zoo has both bears and wolves, but the zoo itself is not vastly accessible by public transit, I believe.

(And yeah, Ely, you need a car. Duluth is gorgeous, though.)

[geminigirl]

What about Washington DC? You could visit both the National Zoo, in Washington, and head up to Baltimore via the MARC train, and then use transit to go see the Aquarium there, which is quite lovely. If you were to do that and planned to fly directly from London, I'd suggest flying into Baltimore rather than Dulles airport because it's more accessible via transit. If you flew to somewhere else and then connected, you could possibly fly into National Airport, which is easily accessible by transit. WMATA (the transit agency in Washington) is pretty good about accessibility for wheelchairs, and many of the DC attractions are pretty friendly to the mobility impaired.

[firecat]

San Francisco Zoo doesn't have a lot of wolves, but it does have a few bears. And lemurs!

[nitoda]

Seconding San Francisco - watching the grizzlies being fed was the MOST amazing thing!