Children's Nature Retreat Foundation at 5178 Japatul Spur, Alpine, California.

This place is awesome. I never really liked zoos because it always seems like the animals are unhappy there. It's like they're just a spectacle for tourists to gawk at, and it kind of makes me sad. I never got that feeling with the animals at Children's Nature Retreat. These animals look well taken care of, and happy. And just about all of them you can feed yourself.

Me, my wife, and son showed up here spur the moment one day after reading about them on the internet. We were greeted by a really nice woman who told us the pricing. We were a little shocked at the price, and we were kind of on a shoestring budget at the time and we wouldn't have been able to afford for all of us to go in, but she explained that we could buy tickets through Groupon for half price. But instead of sending us away to do that, she not only recommended that we could do it right there, but she let us use her phone to buy the Groupon tickets because we had no data plan on our phones. It was very thoughtful of her to do that and we enjoyed our time there very much. Like I said, I've never been a zoo person, but this was different. I just had a sense that these animals were treated a lot better than ones at the zoo. It's hard to explain why I felt that way, but you'd just have to go and see for yourself. It's a fantastic little spot to go to or a few hours and my son loved seeing all the animals up close.