I've heard about Henry's Ark for years, but never made it out there. I searched for information on the web so I'd know what to expect. I couldn't find an active website, but several of us were amused to see a newsletter from 1998 on someone's site. And now that we've already gone, I found them on Facebook.
The drive out to Prospect was an easy one from the Highlands. It's fairly easy to tell when you're getting close. You'll see lots of fenced enclosures and some really big bulls. Then you're greeted by the zebras when you pull into the parking lot. There aren't a lot of directions, just a big fat sign saying to only feed the animals carrots. I think they've had some trouble with people bringing inappropriate food to feed the animals. So we headed toward the right, because that's where most of the people seemed to be heading.
One word of advice - You can never have enough carrots. I simply let Piper pull a few from our garden. The goats were happy to eat them, greens and all, but they were gone very quickly.
You basically follow a gravel road through the farm. There are enclosures on either side of you containing assorted animals. A few of them will be wandering about, like the little baby peacocks (much to the chagrin of the mama peacock. Or would that be peahen?)
The birds in the picture below were running around all over the place. We weren't sure exactly what they were - clearly some kind of duck, but they had turkey looking heads. Thus, I dubbed them Turduckens.
They had lots of the usual farm animals, like donkeys and mules, a wallowing pig, and a peacock that put on a nice show.
Most of the enclosures were marked with signage. I read on a sign that they were installed as part of a Boy Scout Eagle project. They were well done and provided some good information, but they had nothign to do with the animal that was actually in the enclosure. It looked like the managers/owners/volunteers had moved the animals around to different pens and just hadn't bothered to move the signage along with them. Usually that was fine. In one case, we had no clue what the animal was. It turns out that he was a capybara.
After wandering all the way through the enclosures on the right-hand side, the kids and moms were ready for a break so we looked for a nice picnic spot. Welll... that was hard to come by. There wasn't really any open space where we could spread a picnic blanket. We settled on a gazebo by the pond. It was rather poop covered from the birds, but there were plenty of benches and shade. A nice lady offered to take our group shot, so I'm actually in one of them. ;) We had some trouble getting cooperation from various 3yos who will remain unnamed, but we eventually got everyone in the photo.
After lunch we headed back past the cars to the left-hand side of the parking lot. It turns out there aren't many animals there, but we did have a close encounter with some zebras.
If you go: There is no entrance fee, but donations are accepted. You eventually run into the donation box - it's near a barn structure. There are no bathrooms or picnic tables. You can sit on a bench in or just outside the gazebo for lunch or a snack. Take lots of carrots for the animals.