Everybody needs a place of escape for a day of chilling out, and for me it's the Honolulu Zoo.

It's a serene spot near the beach with lots of grass and trees, gardens and exotic critters where I can always find peace of mind in the company of a couple of happy grandkids who have plenty of safe space to run around with no supervision from me except for a watchful eye.

I was pleased to see Honolulu Zoo receive recognition as one of the nation's best yesterday by The Intrepid Traveler guide.

I started going when my daughter was just a few weeks old, taking her every Sunday to give her breast-feeding mother a few hours of extra sleep.

All I could do at first was spread a blanket on the grass and lay her on her back, but she was quite content to gurgle and flail her arms and legs like an upside-down turtle. When she could get upright, she'd toddle through the flocks of pigeons and squeal with delight as they scattered.

The zoo was more compact then, with no African Savanna, Tropical Forest or Children's Zoo. The animal enclosures were small and they let you get closer to the creatures and you could even feed some of them.

After we moved back to Hilo, we had to make do with the raggedy little zoo at Onekahakaha, but it had a charm of its own. There weren't many animals and they weren't very exotic, but you could get real personal with them.

Half the fun was traveling there with my daughter in her little seat on the back of my 10-speed bike happily singing, "Mary Had a Little Lamb."

When we moved to Washington, D.C., for a few years, we went often to the National Zoo, which is one of the best in the world, but hustling around to see everything sometimes seemed more like work — for me, anyway; my daughter and son loved the pandas and polar bears they'd never seen at other zoos.

By the time we moved back to Honolulu, my kids were too grown up to be interested in going to the zoo with the old man, but the grandkids came along soon enough and the Honolulu Zoo was one of the places I could take them on fully accessible outings now that I was in a wheelchair.

We joined the fight together for decent housing for keeping Rusti the orangutan and the Indian elephants Mari and Vaigai in Honolulu.

My grandson and I went to the zoo soon after 9/11 to clear our heads from the horror of the attack and the unimaginable ways it had changed his future.

A day at the zoo with the grandkids was just the tonic I needed to shake the blues over the deaths of an old friend and a dear aunt.

My grandson, now 12, has become quite an authority on animals along the way. On our latest zoo day last week, I was pointing out to his 4-year-old sister the similarities between zebras and horses. "Actually, zebras are more similar to donkeys," he corrected me, expounding in detail on how to tell by their tails.

I beamed with pride. If nothing else, I've helped him learn to recognize a horse's 'okole when he sees one.

(Anybody interested in seeing a short video of our latest trip to the zoo can go to http://volcanic ash.honadvblogs.com and scroll down.)

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at http://volcanicash.honadvblogs.com.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.