Visited on July 19 and July 26, 2025. You may or may not already know that I'm pretty old, so I use facebook. :D Pretty much everytime I've logged on recently, there's been an ad for the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens, in Palm Desert, CA. They recently acquired a pair of bobcat kittens, and they're ridiculously cute. So after a week or two of seeing them frolic everyday on my facebook feed, I decided to go see them. Yes, they're that cute.
I've visited the Living Desert numerous times, both day time and night time, but apparently have not blogged them all. I used to go more often before, when they participated in a Bank of America program called, "Museums on Us." I don't know how that was financed, but the upshot was that, on the first full weekend of each month, if you had a BofA card of any kind, you got free admission to one of many museums, some of which were zoos. The program still exists, but the Living Desert no longer participates.
They've also left the reciprocal admission program that most public zoos are part of, so I can't even get half-price admission with my LA Zoo card.
Full price admission is a helfty $39.95 each. Zoo membership is about 3.5x that, so if you plan to visit more than about four times, you come out "ahead" if you buy a membership.
Because Living Desert has, in addition to their animals, a pretty substantial trail to hike, about half of my zoo visits when it was free included some hiking on that trail. Those trails close in the heat of summer, but it'll still be there in the late fall, winter, and spring, so there was that little extra attaction to get me to splurge on the membership. Well, that, and the stupid, cute bobcat kittens!
It turned out that, on consecutive weekends, I committed myself to volunteering for night sky programs at Sky's the Limit, in Twentynine Palms. For each trip, I stayed at the Super 8 in Yucca Valley (because of the Wyndham Rewards plan, with various point promotions, and because their rates are quite affordable in the heat of summer). That put The Living Desert about a one hour drive away from me in the morning, which isn't close, but it is half the distance of driving there from my home, so it's relatively close. Plus, ridiculously cute bobcat kittens!
So the first week was entirely planned, and I bought the dual membership so I could bring my wife. Got there around 8:30am, about 90 minutes after they opened. That weekend, it was already very hot, and we moved slowly, but did manage to drag ourselves to see the bobcat kittens. We passed many other animals along the way that were plopped flat and motionless, just trying to stay cool.
But the kittens, while now the size of a large housecat, were nearly continuously active, running around the enclosure, climbing some of the rocks and trees, and having a grand ole time.
They definitely felt the heat, though. They, like domestic dogs and cats, can't sweat, so they can only disperse heat by either maximizing their area (sprawling out) or panting. They panting just makes them cuter, however, because it looks like they're laughing.
The bobcat enclosure was previously occupied by "Crawler," who died in April, a month or so before his s3rd birthday (very old, for a bobcat).
It has a solid bottom section to separate the bobcats from the people, topped by a sold glass section. Above that are vertical wires, which are widely separated enough that you can shoot a telephoto lens through the opening without significant optical artifacts. So I went kind of nuts, both times. Only a small fraction of my shots are here.
If bobcat kittens sound like something you want to see, go soon. They're growing up fast. Also, if visiting, they're more active early, so try to get there early. In the summertime, the Living Desert opens at 7am.
BTW, just as an aside, no I don't get any kickback when I mention brands or places. I just mention thinks I like, that work for me on my travels to hikes or related activities. Feel free to post comments if you have any questions about why I like them!
