A Safari In Nebraska
- Jake Hunter
- Jul 13, 2021
- 11 min read
My wife Taylor and I decided yesterday that we would head west to the Nebraska equivalent of the Serengeti: Wildlife Safari Park in Ashland, NE. People tend to characterize Nebraska as this flat, boring area with nothing to see for hours and hours before eventually blending into Colorado where there are cool things like mountains and NFL teams that have as many desirable NFL quarterbacks as the chair I'm sitting in right now does. These people are so wrong. Nebraska is a flat, boring area with a couple things to see, and this park is absolutely one of those things.
The Safari Park is an attraction that allows people to see various animals in natural habitats that are maintained by the park. It's essentially a free-range zoo. We didn't read too much about it before we went, but we knew that there were animals to see and some hiking trails to walk on. That was enough for us.
The park itself is about 30 minutes outside of downtown Omaha, and it is run by the Omaha Zoo. As you can see below, if you're coming from Lincoln (presumably to flee Husker country) it'll be about the same length of trip.
I'll do my best to give you a play-by play description of what we saw, but you absolutely should go check it out yourself if you are ever in the area, because it's definitely worth the price of admission (which is $8 for anyone 12+ and $6 for kids). Feel free to inquire about anything in the comments!
When we first got to the park, we pulled up to the visitor center/admissions booth and were greeted by a kind, helpful employee who not only worked through a sub-optimal ticket scanner performance but also offered me a complimentary map of the site. You can never have too many maps. We drove around the building and followed the driveway past a parking lot and into a hilly grassland area. This area was designated for the elk, but they were all congregated on the complete opposite side of the clearing (of course).
One good/bad thing about the park is that the speed limit is a strictly-enforced 7 MPH. It's good that the speed limit is as low as it is because it enables you to drive and enjoy whatever you're looking at without feeling like you're holding up people behind you. However, when all the animals are chilling out all the way across a clearing, you realize how slow 7 MPH can be.
Back to our ride, we finally made it over to the elk after the longest 2000-foot drive of my life. Taylor snapped this phenomenal photo.
Holy cow, those things are majestic! Look at the size of those antlers (more on those in a bit)! I had never seen elk out in the wild from anything approaching this close before. I knew they were bigger than deer, but their height both with and without the antlers kind of took my breath away. I would have attempted to get a picture that compared their size to my height, but I was held back by the core rule of the park: Stay in your car unless otherwise instructed. I can't imagine why that's the case. I've never seen an elk eat a person.
We drove a little further and, suddenly, the speed limit wasn't the only thing slowing us down.
Another core rule of the park: The animals always have the right-of-way.
Yeah, but what if they don't use their turn signal?
With the elk now safely behind us, we drove forward into a wooded area. The map and signs said we were supposed to be seeing white-tailed deer next, but we were first treated to a phenomenal view of a both a blue and a red Toyota Prius stopped in front of us. Nature is amazing!
We had to wait a minute or so to see why they were stopped, but it was worth the wait. I'll be honest, I was pretty unexcited about the prospect of seeing deer in the wild. It's fairly common sight in our part of the country unless all your neighbors are shooting fireworks off 24/7 (yes, I'm looking at you, Council Bluffs). My interest level was simply not as high as it should have been.
What a glorious creature. It was in the moments when these pictures were take that I realized that even though I see deer pretty frequently (I saw one running right down the middle of Creighton's campus one day, for example), I don't routinely see bucks. I think their antlers are so neat. How can something asymmetrical look so aesthetically pleasing? Why do they look so soft, but clearly they aren't? It was after pondering this second question that I was educated about something I did not know much about by both Taylor and a sign put up right by these deer: velvet.
Velvet is, in short, a sheen of skin tissue that carries nutrients to the antlers of the deer. I didn't know this, but one of the main differences between horns and antlers is the fact that antlers are living bundles of tissue while horns are essentially dead bone. The velvet helps the antlers to grow, but there's one more complication: Deer shed their antlers each year in the winter (due to a drop in testosterone, fun fact). This means that the velvet has to be shed before the antlers can go because velvet keeps the antler alive (makes sense). This leads to these horrifying sights being commonplace during certain parts of the year.
Yuck, but also pretty cool. Knowing about velvet also helps us explain why deer are often seen rubbing their antlers on trees and other things. Velvet is like a normal layer of skin, and it gets itchy!
Unfortunately/fortunately, we didn't see any deer velvet shedding, but I did happen notice one of the deer itching its antlers on the trees. The more you know!
Next up after the deer was a series of birds. First, a few pelicans said hi.
I'll never believe how big those bills can be.
After that, we got to get out of our car! We parked and walked over to an enclosure for a couple swans and the king of birds: the bald eagle.
Get a load of those guys. Bald eagles always look a little mad, a little surprised, a little crazy, and a lot like mouth breathers. They're also huge, and I can't believe they live close to where I live.
Helping to put their size into perspective, we found a statue that I am sure is built to be a life-sized replica.
That bird's wingspan is about 1.1 Taylors by my measurement, folks.
Since the walking trails were connected to the area we were at, we made sure we were prepared for a couple miles of walking. We stopped by the bathrooms. A brief review can be found below the image I captured.
Overall, the bathrooms seemed fairly clean for a public restroom in the middle of a park near Ashland, NE. As far as the traffic to the bathroom goes, I was able to grab this picture right between a couple uses, so it looks relatively deserted. Make no mistake, this bathroom is a fixation point at the park and undoubtedly will make your visit to the park more enjoyable as well. The glass block window lets in almost no natural light, but it gives the illusion that it does. The neutral colors on the walls are versatile in terms of setting the correct mood that befits a bathroom. You could do a lot worse than this location when it comes to choosing a bathroom that fits your personality. Final Rating: 8.5 out of 10
The hiking trails we traversed began with a bridge that ran by a couple owl exhibits and led to the bears and wolves. We couldn't see the bears very well through the family that stood fanned-out at the overlook without allowing any space for someone else to see, but nobody really cares about bears or etiquette, anyways.
There wasn't a ton of activity from the wolves, but we were able to see one from a distance. See if you can find it in this picture (hint: it's the gray thing).
It was actually so much bigger than I expected it to be. I've seen wolves before, but this one was huge! I have a newfound respect for all the bad people who get killed by wolves in all of Jack London's books now. I certainly wouldn't want to fight one of those things after treating it horribly for two chapters. I can't even look at a possum without breaking into a cold sweat.
The walking path continued up a hill to an overlook where we suddenly saw what is called "Frog Lake". Oddly enough, we didn't see any frogs. We could hear them, but we couldn't get to any parts of the lake where they were at. Bummer.
We did see this huge water snake.
He just chilled in the water about three feet away from where I was kneeling when I saw him. I wasn't scared at all. Water snakes are just fish without fins.
I had never seen a snake that big that close to where I was standing for that long. Taylor contemplated throwing me into the water to see if it would attack, but I assured her that my life insurance policy isn't that big and she changed her mind.
Honestly, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip (if not my favorite). Part of the trail was closed ahead of where we were, so nobody else was coming up to the lake. It was very peaceful yet vibrant, and it gave us a great opportunity to see the ecosystem of a Midwestern swamp in action.
We didn't see any alligators.
On our return trip back to the parking lot, we were surprised to hear an unwelcome animal noise: dozens and dozens and dozens of elementary children screaming. Look, I love working with kids, but in no way does that mean I want three busloads of them walking through a relatively quiet and calm nature setting with me. We quickened our pace and readied ourselves for continuing in our car. We had a short delay because I got something in my ears.
Once we got back in the car, we turned and entered "Crane Meadows". I can't describe this area as well as these pictures and this video can.
The meadows are essentially an open area that has a bunch of cranes, swans, and some pelicans roaming around. Clearly, they are not shy about getting up close to cars driving through!
In the middle of the video, you can begin to hear the cranes calling in the background right as one of the zookeepers had pulled up right behind us . Right as they stopped, we could hear a number of cranes all calling out in unison. Once this unified howl/murmur/hum reverberated throughout the meadow, we saw a ton of cranes (like 10-15) come waddling out of the woods, making a beeline straight to the car. Classical conditioning is alive and well in the Safari Park.
Beyond the Crane Meadows were the "Bison Plains". There was an overlook area in addition to a driveway that wound around the area where the bison spent their time. We opted to start at the overlook, where I was informed by one of the displays that the scientific name for bison is "Bison bison". I'm surprised nobody put the effort in to come up with a random second word, but now you know a fun fact that you can impress other people with someday.
Another lesson I learned while reading the signs they had up is that a group of elk is called:
A. A "Legion"
B. A "Swarm"
C. A "Squad"
D. A "Gang"
If you picked D, you are correct! Which is absolutely hilarious. So from now on, if you ever happen to hear me refer to the "group of elk" I'm spending time with, you can chuckle to yourself that I'm way too homeschooled to be associating myself with cool words like "gang".
Speaking of "gang", check this one out.
Another thing I was able to learn (yeah, I learned a lot yesterday) was the origin of the naming of elk. One former name for elk was wapiti, which means "white rump" in Shawnee and Cree.
The name checks out.
This elk told me: "Put this on your blog. People will love this."
Now, all these elk pictures are taken in the Bison Plains, and I want to assure you that there were also bison in this area. We just had to drive all the way around to see them up close. It was 100% worth the wait.
........and that wait was even a little longer than expected because when we drove up to see them, they started moving back right towards the overlook we were just standing. So we ended up having to take a couple laps around the bison plains when it was all said and done. You can see the latter half of the bison's expedition in this video below.
The bison weren't actually that fast, but did you know that they can run up to 40 MPH? That's almost six times faster than I could drive by them (thanks, speed limit)! If you look closely at some of the bison on the edges of the group during the video, you can see a few of them rolling around on the ground. When they do that, they're taking what is called a "dust bath", which helps them to keep small bugs out of their hair while they're walking around. They take these baths in "wallows", or patches of ground where some ground is turned up.
Here are a few pictures we took of the herd. You can see the calf of the herd in the middle of the first picture. Taylor said it was "pretty cute".
All in all, bison are one of my favorite animals now.
The bison represent the last stop of the drive in the safari, but we had saved some stuff at the entrance for the end. This poor guy looked like his coffee wore off about 2 hours before we saw him.
For comparison, this is what a Nebraska prairie dog that isn't on controlled substances looks like.
I won't rag on him too hard, but I've never seen something that screams "drunk chipmunk" as much as that face a couple pictures above. As a paying customer, you should demand a higher standard if you happen to visit the prairie dog town at the Safari Park.
The prairie dog town is on one side of the visitor center, and on the other side is a cool little area with some other animals to see up close. We saw this barred owl, which had to show off by turning its head over 360 degrees in one direction while we were standing there.
This area is also where we met Greg. Greg is a horned owl that we affectionately named after visiting. Greg sings a fairly unique kind of song that neither of us were expecting.
What a gem.
Greg was the last stop on our safari before we checked out the visitors center and gift shop. There are a bunch of stuffed animals of wolves, elk, etc. that you can buy. They also had a set of antlers for sale for $500. At that price, I feel like you could just buy a deer and grow infinite antlers yourselves. That's just my opinion, though.
Our trip to the Safari Park was truly one of my favorite experiences ever, especially from a tourism perspective. It's somewhat bizarre to drive into the middle of farmland in Nebraska, but it really delivers on the "safari" experience as much as anything in this part of the country can. The mix of driving and hiking allows for a diverse range of experiences to occupy your time with, and the animals themselves are shockingly interactive (as long as you're in your car, of course). You can easily kill 3+ hours working your way through the experience if you take your time, and I think that's tremendous value for what you're paying for.
It is with this in mind that I bestow the "Cogito Ergo Cogito 'Highly Recommended'" label to the Wildlife Safari Park in Ashland, NE
One recommendation I would make if you happen to go out that way is coupling that trip with a few other attractions that are close by. The Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum is just on the other side of Interstate 80, as is Mahoney State Park. The Holy Family Shrine exit is a few miles away, and that exit also connects to The Cloisters on the Platte and Nebraska Crossing, a massive outlet mall. In short, you could easily fill a day with the tourist attractions in the area around the Safari Park. However, if I were going to recommend only one of those things, I'd be hard-pressed to not point you toward enjoying a safari on the plains. Regardless, happy travels and thank you so much for reading!
I concur with your highly recommend rating! It was so fun, from the birds to the bison to the crazy-eyed praire dog! 10 bison out of 10 bison!