Safari

Last year when Bethanie was visiting, the kids and I took her to one of our favorite places. It is a wild life park. This year, she requested that we be able to go back to show Mom, Hailey and Riely.

Usually we ride the big bus through the safari, but this year we decided to rent one of the vans to drive through the safari ourselves. It was well worth it. This was by far our favorite visit. The van was a 15 passenger so there was plenty of room for everyone to have their own window. The bus is usually full and the kids have to try to climb over each other to see.

This is the entrance to the drive through portion of the park. There is a cattle gate on the ground and the animals know they can't cross it. As soon as the van crossed the cattle gate, the animals swarmed the van waiting to be fed.

I was amazed that the larger animals have learned that if they stand directly in front of the vehicles, the vehicles will stop. Then the animals slowly move to the side of the van.

These little calves had me stopped, but they had no idea they were supposed to move to the side for food or move out of the way so I could drive. This momma cow came along and gently bumped them with her head until they moved out of the road.

My mom cracked me up. She kept her window rolled up most of the time so she wouldn't be surprised by any unexpected guests sneaking up to her window.

There are tons of pigs running around. This momma pig is being followed by one of her piglets.

Then we saw these two little ones trying to climb the hill.

It looks like Aaron is actually talking to the elk which he was.

There are two camels who aren't allowed to roam free, but we were able to pull right up to their fence to feed them.

The giraffes, on the other hand, are allowed to roam free. I took this picture as the giraffe was approaching the van.

He bent down for Riely to feed him.

Then Riely got to pet him. This is the best smile I saw from this kiddo all week. Priceless.

Here Hannah and Bethanie are feeding some of the many elk.

Hailey also thought it was fun although she was not happy about being slobbered on.

We packed lunch to eat at the park. There are picnic tables set up where we were able to sit and watch some of the animals.

Mom and the girls enjoying lunch. Rachel wasn't with us because she went tubing with the youth from our church for Youth Week.

After lunch we went through the "walk about" portion of the park.

When Hannah first walked up to this bird, it said, "Hello." I wish I had had the camera on her at that moment because she looked at me with such a fun look of surprise. The rest of the group came over to hear the bird talk. When they started to walk off, my mom said, "Bye" and once again I wish I had had my camera focused on the entire group because they all looked at me with that same open mouth surprised expression Hannah had when the bird said, "Hello."

One of the employees had an Albino Burmese Python out sunning in the grass. The kids were excited to get to touch it.

Of course, I had to end the day with a bit of silliness.