We live in Columbia, South Carolina and have one of the best Zoo’s in the nation. In fact Riverbanks Zoo was recently named one of the top 7 in North America.

Quite a few years ago when Sunshine was little, I learned that the best time to visit the Zoo in order to avoid crowds and beat the the S.C. Famous heat, is early Sunday mornings. Weekdays during the school year are likely ideal as well. But when sunshine was little we could throw on sundresses, eat breakfast, be at the Zoo gate waiting on it to open, spend 2 hours walking around and still make it to church on time.

My husband, Sugar, and I decided to pay Riverbanks a visit recently as it had been a year since either had visited. The Zoo has so many new cute little babies. The gorilla babies were so much FUN to watch. We could have sat there for hours. We had the BEST time during our visit and were finishing up around the time the parking lot was starting to fill. Note that there are two parking lots, one on each side of the river and so many different things to do in addition to seeing the animals. You can feed animals, plan an animal encounters, play in the splash water park, listen to live music, zip across the river on the zip line course and so much more. Everything you need to know can be found on the Riverbanks Website here https://www.riverbanks.org/

We highly recommend a visit, make it a day trip if you don’t live in the area and enjoy Ice Cream from Zesto before you head back home. Enjoy a few of my photographs below.

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