Happy Hollow Zoo

San Ramon is really nestled in a great area of California. We have all the conveniences of a suburb with all the amenities of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose all within an hour’s drive (well…depending on traffic)from us. We had been to the Oakland zoo with Forest back when he was in the 8 month range. He enjoyed it, but a lot of it went over his head. 

When I took him to meet Talia, Kye, and Tal’s mom at the Gulf Breeze zoo in Florida, he was a great age (13 months) and the zoo was a much better scale for little ones with plenty of interactive exhibits. 

A friend mentioned that San Jose had a pretty similar zoo which was more of a park-like setting and geared to 1-5 year olds so Jon and I added it to our list of things to check out. Since his last Friday off coincided with picture perfect California weather, we decided to go for it. We made the 40 minute drive to San Jose to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. Kids under 2 get in free which was a plus. 

We immediately headed to the petting zoo area which was quite impressive. Kids were allowed into an enclosure with docile goats and are provided with hay for feeding and brushes for grooming. You can also purchase kibble for 25 cents in various spots. 

There are also sheep, mini-horses, chickens, etc in their farm section. Right off the petting zoo is a toddler friendly playground if kiddos need to burn any additional energy. There is also a carousel and an education center where zookeepers and volunteers give talks on various animals at the zoo. There was a snake exhibition going on while we passed by but Forest didn’t seem too interested. Thank goodness he is much more into cuddly creatures at this point in his life! 

We headed out to find some furry mammals but got sidetracked by another massive playground area. Forest is very into slides right now so we let him play a while on the playground while we relaxed in the shade. 

He was very disappointed that he was 3 inches too small to ride the roller-coaster that borders the big play area. He kept freezing when it would start and point excitedly saying ‘CAR! CAR!’. 

At the rate you’re growing, you’ll be big enough soon, bubs! 

Knowing that we’d be facing 5 o'clock traffic soon we decided to start speeding through the rest of the exhibits which include a crooked house play ground and a few animal enclosures including some Fennec foxes! 

I think I was more excited than Forest even though he was wearing his fox shirt for the occasion. There was some construction in front of their habitat so unfortunately we couldn’t get a good photo op of Forest with his (momma’s) favorite animal. Once we saw the foxes we headed back toward the entrance. We stopped to let Forest ride the carousel. 

He chose to ride the lemur, naturally. He was really excited when we first got on but then got impatient when it didn’t start moving for a few minutes. Once it got going he was all smiles though. I was so bummed I didn’t take my iPhone on board to get a shot of his precious face but Jon at least took some shots from the outside. I was gonna let him ride for a second time but we didn’t want to get pushed back too late with the risk of traffic awaiting us. There was also a huge bridge walking path outside the park but we decided to save that for another day. 

We left right around 4 and it ended up taking us 1 hour 45 minutes to drive the 40 miles home. Ugh this Bay area traffic is no joke! 

Soooooooo….we loved the park and wish we had more time to spend there but next time we will be going in the morning to try to avoid bumper to bumper traffic all the way home. I can’t wait to go back! My play group has a play date to the Oakland zoo planed for next week so I can't wait for that either.