One WILD Sunday!

Well, I told you that we had a WILD Sunday!  We went for our first visit to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.  So, there is the San Diego Zoo, located in San Diego's Balboa Park.  This is the zoo with the Polar Bears and Pandas.  There is also a San Diego Zoo Safari Park located right outside of Escondido, which is the town we go to for everything.  When I knew we were moving here, I really thought that we would take the kids to the San Diego Zoo immediately, since that is one of the premier tourist attractions in San Diego.  Well, time has been flying past, and I decided that we would get annual zoo passes as one of Grace's birthday gifts.  Let me just say that we have never gotten zoo passes because the Houston Zoo just seemed too far away for a day trip.  That makes me laugh now that I would pretty much drive 2 hours anywhere and feel as though it was just "right there."  (That's because EVERYTHING is at least 1 hour away.  PERSPECTIVE...it's a lovely thin!)

So, yesterday we left the house at 8:00 am to head to church.  After church, we set our GPS and headed for the Safari Park.  It was only like 15 minutes from church!  CRAZY and AWESOME!!!!  We had a great time.  The Safari Park has African animals and you definitely feel very close to the animals.  There is an awesome African Safari tram ride that takes you through the wide open animal safari, but there are also tons of animals and exhibits for you to walk around and see.  My pictures never do justice to what we actually experienced, but I hope you enjoy!

I think this one speaks for itself!

Riding the Rhino!

This was the first exhibit we got to.  Everything was very open like this!

Pelican!  Pelicans are REALLY big birds!

We were super excited about the Gorillas and...

We totally lucked out because it was feeding time!  There is a male, female, great-great-great-grandma, and baby.

See his carrot?!

The poor little baby had to crawl down the rock wall to get some broccoli.  It was funny watching the male gorilla stake his claim to the food.

These gorillas weren't messing around!  "Don't you take my bell pepper you little "whipper-snapper!" (I think that is what this gorilla was trying to say with his body language.)  They ate bell peppers, broccoli and carrots.  I told the kids that I was going to call them gorillas now, and not rabbits!  We eat those veggies on a regular basis at our house!

Ben was REALLY into the map this time.  Grace was too, and could actually follow it and tell us where we were going.  It was hilarious to watch them with their maps.

Ready for the safari ride!

This is the view overlooking the african safari area.  Beautiful!

Zebras!  Did you know that zebras do not play well with others?  They had to be in a fenced in area!

My sweet (soon-to-be) 10 year old girl looking at the giraffes.

This poor giraffe kept licking the caging around the tree.  Maybe he was cleaning his tongue?!

Of course the Lion was sleeping!

An the lioness was HUGE.  They said that the car they play on/in has been reinforced with steel so that it doesn't cave in.

At this point we were all going a little "batty" because we could not find out how to get to the elephants, so I made them take a picture!  LOL!

We finally found the elephants!

Super fun day, and I cannot wait to visit over and over again with the kids!  Ben even said, "Mom, we need to go home and have school so we can learn all about these animals!"  That's encouraging!  Maybe we are going to be successful at this homeschool thing after all!