The 2nd day of our trip we headed to Camp Verde to go the Out of Africa Wildlife Park. It was so much fun. The boys were very excited to "go on a safari & see all the African animals like Grammy & Papa". Here are the pictures from our day (Beware of picture overload). We started out with the "safari". They gave us each a carrot as we got on the bus in case we ran into a giraffe who wanted a snack. Here's Jameson ready to go.
It took no time to find the giraffe. As soon as he saw the bus he headed straight for us knowing what was in store. Here he is headed our way.
I was so surprised when Jameson jumped right up and started waving his carrot around trying to get the giraffe to come his way. (I wasn't at a fabulous angle for pictures, but the superhero hat is Jameson.)
Jameson was so brave as that huge giraffe came and took the carrot right out of his hand. He thought it was so awesome.
Daddy was brave enough to try the other way to feed him which was by putting it in his mouth to get a nice big giraffe kiss. I didn't get the actual kiss, but here's the giraffe coming in for the kiss.
Alex was too nervous to feed the giraffe himself, so he gave his carrot to Jameson to feed him for him, which Jameson was more than happy to do. The boys thought the giraffe's big purple tongue was crazy.
Next on our "safari" we saw a bunch of zebra. My kids love zebras, but apparently zebras like to bite so we kept everything tucked nicely inside the bus.
Didn't stop them from coming right up to the bus.
Jameson with the zebra right next to him. I think it made him a little nervous.
Here's Alex & Daddy w/some zebras
Alex was loving "the safari".
A lady got a kiss from a camel. She said it wasn't as sloppy as the one Daddy got from the giraffe.
Here's our safari guide with the ostrich. They told us that one bites too, so Jameson was pretty worried about it when it got close.
He was brave enough to touch the ostrich egg though. He thought it was really cool.
Daddy & Alex enjoying the scenery.
Here are a bunch of pictures of some of the other animals we saw on the "safari" ride.
After our safari we saw a presentation about a porcupine & an armadillo. The boys loved it. They though the porcupine looked pretty funny.
Alex was really brave & got to pet the armadillo which he thought was pretty cool.
The animals were so close. This tiger just paced along the fence & looked at us. The boys thought it was cool to see it so close. We thought the tiger might have thought they looked like a good snack the was she looked at them.
Here are a bunch of other pictures we got of various lions, tigers, etc. while walking around. It was pretty cool to see them all up so close.
We tried feeding an Emu. It didn't like the food we had, but it came right up and talked to us.
This zoo's big specialty is their "Tiger Splash" show. It was pretty entertaining. They brought 2 tigers & about 6 people into this caged area with a big pool. They "don't train them, they just play with them." They fill bags, clothes, etc with balloons & attach them to poles & get the tigers to chase/catch them & they try to get them to jump into the water after them. Here are the pictures.
I would not want a tiger coming after me looking like this.
This is hard to see, but they gave the tiger one end of this long rope thing & then 4 guys played tug of war with him then turned it into jump rope. Below is the jump rope.
Tiger tug of war
The boys thought it was so funny to see the tigers jump so high. They kept joking that they were "flying tigers"
Once again, this is way too close for comfort for me. Crazy people.
After the tiger show we headed over to the snake talk. The boys loved the snakes too. Their favorite was this 17 foot python that they eventually got to pet.
They even convinced Daddy (who is totally afraid of snakes) to pet it. They said it was one of their favorite things they did all day.
The last thing we did was see the hyena show. The workers don't actually get into the cage w/the hyenas because they're so tempermental, but the boys thought the show was awesome.
We learned that hyenas make 2 types of sounds. When they're happy they "mooo" & the actual "laughing" that they're famous for is actually their way of saying stay away from my food. The boys thought it was hilarious.
It was such a fun trip. We highly recommend this place to anyone (just not in the summer, we wouldn't have wanted it any warmer than it was when we were there). We're so glad we go to take this little vacation with the boys before the big changes coming in about a month.
No comments:
Post a Comment