SoCal - Post 7 (The End!)

On Saturday, our last day in Cali, we headed to the Wild Animal Park Safari Park.  I was the only one in our group that had been to the Safari Park before, but I was thrilled to go back.

Gorgeous view from the top of the main viewing area.

See the giraffes by the palm trees?

*Insert lion around joke here*  ;)

 The tickets we bought included the tram ride and I would highly recommend anyone going to the Safari Park to go on this.  It was the best part of the day.

This was Ari the entire trip, "I want MOM!"

Lexi swinging on something she shouldn't be.

Kaden, Danny, Steph, and Lexi

Shane LOVED the Safari Park and kept getting in all my shots.  It was cute in an annoying kind of way.

You don't even want to know how much those people paid for that "safari."

This guy was in "time-out" for uh...spreading his seed a little too much.  They had to bring in another rhino to help diversify the gene pool a bit.

Animals coexisting...

Ari didn't care.  She was like, "Where are my fruit snacks?!"

See the baby?  It was only 2 days old.  *sniff*  So cute!!

I think they said this type of rhino only has 8 left in the WORLD.  Stupid poachers.

The tour guide said in the 15 years she's worked there, she's never seen this guy come out during the day.  He's normally super shy.

I don't know what he was, but he was pretty.

View from the other side of the park.

 

Ok, so I have to explain why the zebras aren't in a massive area like the rest of the animals.  They said that the type of food zebras eat has very little calories, so in order to get the amount of calories they need, they have to eat ALL day long.  That's what they have do in the wild, too.  Apparently the park did have the zebras out with the other animals, but they were hogging the feeding trough and no one else could ever get any food.  The park people tried putting them in their own area to see how they liked it.  They LOVED it and couldn't care less that their enclosure is smaller than everyone else's.

This guy was in time-out, too.  Same reason as the rhino.  haha

Shane got in my shot again....

So I used my camera's awesome zoom powers!  Mwahahaha

 

This was the tram

Tour guide told us that it is very rare to ever see a giraffe lying down in the wild.  They take forever getting back up, so it leaves them too vulnerable to predators.

BABY!!

 After the tram ride, we walked around for a while.

This guy was kinda ugly.  Sorry buddy.

I don't know what this is, but it was weird!

Zebra, hyena, horse, donkey all rolled into one.

LOONG necks!

He was close enough to touch.

 

 

This guy was SO little!!

We had lunch and let the kids play at the play ground.  There was still more to see, but it started sprinkling, so we headed out.  (Plus we'd seen all the animals the day before and all of the adults were tired of walking.)

The kids got good naps in, which was great, because we ended up going out to dinner for our last meal there.  Where did we go?  Where else?  Red Robin!  ;)

We headed home around 6:00 AM the next morning.  The car ride back was fine until the last two hours when suddenly the girls traded off whining and crying about how they just wanted to be HOME.  We hit a snowstorm on our way back in, so that delayed us a little bit, too.

All in all, it was a great vacation and so good to spend so much time with Danny and Steph.  It was perfect and a great way to end our year.  :)