Rochester is OK!

I hope everyone has had a chance to make it up there this week. I haven’t had a chance yet, but I live in the neighborhood and traffic was pretty consistent all weekend. The weather looks like it will continue to hold out this week, so attendance should be pretty high. Hopefully there are still some flowers left, but there’s plenty of other things going on as well.

I should be getting back to posting more regularly. I’ve been pretty busy lately with my other two sites and life in general, so it’s been tougher to check out new places to eat.

I’m looking forward to The Owl House opening up on Marshall street, off Monroe Ave.  Check out their Twitter and Facebook feeds for more information. I’m pretty excited. They have a good crew on board and have been pretty transparent about what they’re doing to the place, and what they will be doing when the place opens. They casually mention some of the food they’ll be serving, and my interest is definitely piqued.

Also in the next few weeks is the Roc City Rib Fest! It’ll be up at Ontario Beach Park again and there are even more people competing this year, including a couple of good friends of mine (Go GCI!). There will be plenty of vendors, plenty of smoked food, and a lot of folks competing for a multitude of titles. It’s sure to be a blast.

I’m still looking for other people who want to help with the site’s momentum. It’s not a paying gig, but if you’re a foodie or a festival head with a positive attitude, I would love to have you write for the site.

I could write for awhile, but I believe the gallery will speak louder.

Just a heads up for any of the folks out there who attend the festival solely to see the blooming lilacs, they’re almost there. The festival itself is scheduled for May 15th, but from the look of things, the flowers might be gone by then. The festival has a lot of great food and music, but if you want to see flowers, a trip to the park this week might be warranted.

In my opinion the mark of any decent city is the availability of a zoo. I think zoos are pretty great, as they help bring a greater awareness to their communities about the state of the global animal kingdom, as well as the immense educational opportunity to present the people with animals they may never view in their native habitat.

I loved going to the zoo as a kid. I’ve always had an affinity for nature, and a timeless curiosity about animals and the world we live in. The realization that I may not ever have the chance to view white rhinos in their native habitat, simply due to just never making it there, or the fact that they may not have a native habitat for much longer. To be able to stand not more than 10 feet from one of these magnificent creatures is really quite profound. I wonder how many people that pass by them every day in their annual trek through the zoo realize how lucky we are to be able to do so.

How often will I ever be this close to a real tiger like that? The last few visits I’ve taken to the zoo, she’s been asleep atop her perch, so I was thrilled to see her up and moving about. That’s the great thing about going to the zoo. Every time is a new experience, and you never know what kind of mood the animals will be in. Some days will bear a disappointing sleeping Tiger, but on the day she’s active and so close to you, it is quite exhilarating. These animals in particular have faced a shrinking habitat over the years, and again, my chances of ever seeing one in the wild are few and far between (and some day I will make a concerned effort to try to see them in the wild), but at least I will have a moment in the sun on spring Sunday afternoon to be in this kind of proximity to such an amazing beast.

Since I was a child the zoo has grown quite considerably, and every year they make an effort to bring creatures in from other zoos to make that season’s trip even more special. I’m not sure what the plan is for this year, but I went last year to check out the Siberian Tiger, and while it was sound asleep it was still pretty cool. The elephant enclosure and the baboon habitat were also new additions in recent years, and it’s good to see that the elephants have a much larger area to roam.

The zoo is definitely a great place to spend a sunny afternoon, regardless if you have kids of your own or you’re just a big kid at heart. I’d also like to mention that it’s a good place to bring a date. They’re open year round, but their hours vary on the season. You can get all the details on their website, at http://www.senecaparkzoo.org/.