Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail

- September 21, 2019

Beautiful walking paths

Over the winter, my parents bought a travel trailer. My kids have been BEGGING to go camping since they purchased it, and on the last weekend before school started we made that dream come true!

We booked a spot at a new campground at the Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail and it was AMAZING!

Innisfail is about 1.5 hours from Calgary. It is a really nice drive up the QE2, although it can be very busy on long weekends. Innisfail is a small town that has a population of about 8,000 people. There are grocery stores, restaurants, fast-food joints, and other services very close by, so it is great for someone that likes camping but with the comforts of civilization. The town also offers activities like the Pro Rodeo, Kemp House museum and Historic Village museum. It is also close to Red Deer, which offers all of the comforts of a major city.

The Wildlife Park itself is very nice. Upon entering the main building, you are greeted by very friendly staff and are able to look around the gift shop. Items in the shop are priced reasonably, but are also unique, such as the postcards you can purchase with the photos of the animals that live in the park. The park would make a beautiful walk from pen to pen, or you can alternatively rent a golf cart for $10 an hour. This was perfect for my parents, as my mom has arthritis and my dad has a bad back, so we were able to do the whole park!

The park offers a very wide variety of rescue animals, including outdoor Guinea Pigs! They were my boys' favorite, as they were long-haired and looked as though they were wearing wigs. So cute!

We stopped for lunch at the cafeteria located inside the main building, and ordered a few different offerings, from chicken fingers to burgers. The food was pretty good, and hit the spot after a cool outing at the park.

The campground was well taken care of; the grass was nicely kept, the trees were small but new and well kept, and it was very quiet despite it being a very busy long weekend! I was really impressed. They have a small store that has camping emergency necessities (popsicles for kids and such haha!) as well as bathrooms that offer showers.

I would absolutely 100% recommend this campground to those who have kids! They also allow you to fish off of their pier into a stocked pond, and one of the really unique things about this campground is the fact that they allow you to donate the fish you catch back to the wildlife refuge where they feed it to the bears as a special treat! My oldest caught a HUGE fish out of the pond and we do not eat fish, so we did donate it to the refuge. He received a wooden coin featuring "Berkley" the bear and was told that his fish would go to Berkley as a special treat the next day. I thought that was so sweet, especially as we normally practice catch-and-release fishing so he felt bad that the fish was unable to be let go. Below I have added some photos of our outing!