let the good times roll: Wild Animal Park

Monday, March 1, 2010

Wild Animal Park

our cute friends have season passes to the san diego zoo and they gave us their friend passes for so we could go sometime when we wanted to check it out. they were so sweet to think of us. we carefully planned out a day we could go when ty could take the saturday off and we could just go have a good time. well, like most things we try to plan, the schedule went haywire (we can't complain, becuase it worked out to be more fabulous than we could have pulled off with our original plan).

saturday morning we woke up and it was raining (pouring)! we almost decided not to go. we got up and dressed and ready and ty went to the airport to pick up his brother, trevor and trevor's girlfriend, sidney. they came and hung out for a few minutes and it was like christmas for the kids. couldn't have been better! they took off to go to the san diego temple as we debated what we should do. our tickets expired on the 28th so this was the last day we could go. we decided to brave it - and we're so glad we did!!

after a long 2 hour trip to the park we were so excited to see the animals. as we were walking in, coleman was taking in all the new surroundings. he excitedly looked up at tyler and said, "we goin' in the jungle, dad!" and now after walking through the park and seeing what an amazing place it is, he's more right than any of us knew. the wild animal park felt like being outside - even outside in the jungle. the barriers for the animals are camoflaged so well and many of them are even natural barriers, like rocks, mounds of dirt or trenches in the ground. very cool.

we all had a blast wandering on paved and unpaved trails tracking down the animals. we missed most of the rain and it just sprinkled off and on ('till the very end). we saw lions, warthogs, all types of birds, rabbits, african "antelope" (the word i keep using for everything that remoteley resembles a deer but lives in africa - there were lots of different types), rhinos, giraffes, buffalo, flamingos, ducks (brooklyn's personal favorite) and lots of other neat stuff. coleman also really loved the childrens learning center - he liked playing with the plastic bugs. there were really neat plants too and even an herb garden. we had a terrific time!

at the end it began to rain hard and we were all soaked through, but we had a blast! we met trevor and sidney for dinner afterward and had a fun time hanging out with them.

a wonderful day together. :)

my three favorites :)

dad and brookie looking at the ducks (she was fascinated!) they all came over to see her as soon as she knelt down on the bridge

brookie finding the ducks

coleman chasing rabbits

where'd they go?

my three favorites again - walking along a bridge overlooking neat waterfalls, small streams and lots and lots of birds!

the muscles of the group - ty pushed the stroller loaded with kids and supplies all around the park - even where the signs warned "steep slope" - he's amazing!

look guys! dad looks a lot like this gorilla!

we saw 3 lions - none of them more than 100 feet away - very cool! very magestic and strong looking. one of the lions was asleep on top of a car lounging in the sun. when we saw her get down and how big she was and how the car swayed under her weight and how her muscles showed we understood better why abdi's dad (abdi is one of my 4th graders) had a rule that nobody went outside before he checked for lions - this lion could have swallowed our whole family!

2 ugly warthogs - we decided we wouldn't want to come across one of these big guys in the wild - they're bigger than we thought!

these are some rabbits cole was chasing into the bushes. the one on the right got down like a cat ready to spring when we cornered them. maybe he's been taking lessons from the lions...