Birmingham's Lane Park

Birmingham Botanical Gardens half of Lane Park

For a big city botanical garden, we were very disappointed in this one, the grounds weren’t dirty but they weren’t clean either, there were a lot of weeds in with the flowers, and every employee had his own golf cart and they were all racing around the gardens so you got to choke on the exhaust fuels. They were suppose to have a great Japanese Garden, when we got to that part the main gate was blocked with a pickup truck making repairs and we had to walk around to a small gate in the back, it just wasn’t worth it. The three pictures are about the only nice looking areas that we found we won’t be back.

Birmingham Zoo half of Lane Park

Out one gate, cross the street and in another gate and you are at the zoo. It was pushing 90 and the humidity was about 95% and we were thinking about passing on the zoo but decided that we were already here so lets give it a little look. We were sure glad that we did, it was totally different from the gardens, we were wishing that we had skipped the gardens and spent all our time here.

When you enter the Zoo you are greeted by a bunch of squawking parrots that can be heard 100 feet away, I think that we may have caught part of the monarch butterfly migration because they were all over the park.

The Gorilla was just sitting there eating his broccoli and carrots, probably not a normal diet for a gorilla, but 4 years ago this guy had a pacemaker installed. From what I could get from the little film this was the first time that they have done this. He was just months from cashing it in when they installed it and as of the last test he’s doing great. He’s just stuck with fruits and veggies, as Cathy said the good news is you’re going to live a long life, the bad news is you’re still in a zoo.

The birds were the best, there were about 30 of them in a large room and they had little cups of food that if you held in your hand they would come feed, but if they liked you they would just land on you and lick you or peck at your ears.











After leaving the zoo we went to Dr Pepper Place, this is an old Dr Pepper syrup and bottling plant that closed years ago and has been converted to a bunch of yuppie type shops. Since Cathy is a Dr Pepper junkie I figured that she would like having lunch in the old plant. There is a little deli right in the middle of an antique shop that sits about 8 people, they had some great sandwiches and salads and besides it was the yuppie thing to do.