Safari Park

Our next day of amusement was spent at the Safari Park. I think it was formerly known as the Wild Animal Park. I've had several people ask if it is the same as the zoo. It has a partnership with the zoo, but it's a totally different place. It's like a really wide open zoo. It's so lush and beautiful in some places, and then there are great wide open areas for the animals to roam freely. It seems to us that this is how a zoo should be. There were no stinky little pens with animals that look sad and trapped. They do lots of work with species that are endangered. While there, we saw one of 8 white rhinos that are left in the world. Sadly, they won't be around much longer. The kids had fun exploring, playing on the playgrounds, seeing the amazing animals, and riding the safari tram tour. It was so beautiful to see so many African animals living together with acres and acres to explore. They really wished we could have gone on the zip line and the hot air balloon... never satisfied!
We fell in love with this gorgeous blue bird that followed us around. Maybe it liked that we were all wearing blue!

There were so many elephants, and a cute baby one! 

The absolute highlight of the day was feeding the lorikeets. For $3 you get a little cup of nectar which the birds go crazy for! The kids each took a turn holding it. For some reason the birds really flocked to me, even though I didn't have the nectar. The boys loved those birds. It was a really great experience for all of us. Justin was a little distracted at first while taking pictures because there were birds on him as well.

We also loved petting the goats. Most petting zoos have goats with kind of dirty, matted hair and you worry about stepping on their poop wherever you go. Well, these goats were so beautiful and soft. They had a clean pen and were fun to watch. One goat wasn't happy with Ezra... it had horns and kept trying to head butt him. We left him alone! The boys even got some brushes and groomed a couple of them.  

That afternoon, we got with Justin's family again and went to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. They brought Nolan a birthday present so we got to play the Angry Birds "board game" together at the hotel that evening. Another wonderful day of vacationing!