Some critters of Kentucky

After spending a week in Louisville, it was time to get some mileage into our rental car, so we headed east towards West Virginia. Grandma Susan had done an amazing job compiling a large dossier of potential site-seeing opportunities for us to enjoy along the way, so we decided to stop at the Salato Wildlife Education Centre to check out some of the locals. This place was great, a bit like a zoo (but with just a coin donation box for entry!) with fish, turtles, snakes, salamanders indoors and lots of larger creatures in nice big enclosures outside.

As soon as we entered Eli got up close and personal with a taxidermied black bear - and he came back to it a couple more times because he said that the fur felt so nice.





I was a bit more excited about the prospect of seeing a live bear, but the one they had in the wildlife centre didn't give us much of a show, although Eli did get a kick out of the fact that the bear was lazily stretching his leg against the wall.




We both enjoyed seeing this little chipmunk - they must surely be the cutest of all rodents!


We also saw a sleeping skunk and didn't notice any smell at all, but neither of us were keen enough to experience the smell by waking this little fella.

Canada geese always know a good thing when they see one and there were hundreds of them around the the Wildlife Center ponds - and yes, I know that they are pretty much everywhere in North America, but they are beautiful, especially when they have goslings around.

We probably spent almost 2 hours at the Wildlife Centre and Eli even enjoyed some of the stranger educational elements - like sitting in this up-scaled quail egg - which was supposed to help you understand the plight of ground-dwelling birds I think! - but then we jumped back into the car and continued our eastward journey.