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Photo: Katherine Johnson, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Just west of Peoria, offers a spectacular natural prairie park with massive wildlife enclosures. The park houses buffalo, elk, wolves, a bear, and many smaller prairie animals. It has an interpretive center for the wildlife park, a small zoo-like building featuring snakes and amphibians, an old-fashioned general store-type gift shop, hiking, fishing, overnight lodging in cabins or decommissioned cabooses, an extremely popular train that tours the park, and a frontier farmstead with animals, gardens, a cabin, and a one-room schoolhouse. Interpreters are available throughout the park. Admission is $9 per adult, $6 for children 4-12 (free for 3 and under) (an additional $1 off per person from November to March), which is steep for Peoria but the park is definitely worth it. Visiting on $2 Tuesday cuts the cost quite a bit.
Wildlife Prairie Park, also known as the Hazel & Bill Rutherford Wildlife Prairie Park, is located in Peoria County, Illinois, approximately 10 miles west of downtown Peoria in central Illinois. Opened in the 1970s, it has most recently been operated as a not-for-profit corporation since 2013. The park has 1,800 acres (730 ha) of land with over 150 animals of 60 different species that are native to Illinois.
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Peoria's Class A minor league baseball team is affiliated with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Chiefs play 70 home games between the beginning of April and the end of August. Tickets can easily be bought online or at the box office on game days. Game times vary, but most weekday and Saturday games start at 6:30PM or 7PM with Sunday games at 2PM.
Peoria's professional hockey team plays 28 home games between October and the beginning of April. Tickets can easily be bought online or at the box office on game days. Game times are 7:15PM for Friday and Saturday games with Sunday games at 3:05PM.
Although its headquarters have left Peoria, "CAT" still has a huge workforce here spanning dozens of buildings all over town, and Peoria is a popular destination for fans of CAT machinery. They have a visitor's center with eight exhibit galleries and four theaters, and the tour starts by climbing into the bed of a two-and-a-half story mining truck for a virtual ride.
Peoria's regional museum, with emphasis on art and science, with rotating galleries that change every few months. The regional folk art collection is particularly nice. Riverfront Museum is a Smithsonian Member Institution with reciprocal admission discounts or waivers for members of other Member Institutions. Exhibits are well-curated. The museum is also a teaching institution, with its own classes and with sponsored activities in local schools. (For example, an Ansel Adams exhibit had an ancillary exhibit of high school photography in the style of Ansel Adams.) Daily Planetarium shows (not included in general admission). Gift shop.
One of Peoria's oldest city parks, makes a nice all-day or half-day destination. In addition to traditional park activities (grassy and tree-shaded areas, picnic tables, playing fields, tennis courts), Glen Oak Park has an amphitheater used for outdoor concerts and is home to the Luthy Botanical Gardens, the Peoria PlayHouse Children's Museum, and the Peoria Zoo.
In Peoria Heights is a popular attraction with a water tower you can ascend 200 feet and see panoramic views up to 20 miles in clear weather. The river valley is quite lovely. The tower is open from the end of April through October (weather permitting).