Safari Park!

Love animals? Love adventures? Love laughing? You need to go to Safari Park. Safari Park is a 180 acre drive-through zoo. Pile in the back of a truck (or remain in the safety of your vehicle) with a bunch of friends and buy a few buckets of feed. Drive slowly and hold the feed out of the car so the animals come up to you to get a snack. You will laugh hysterically as you feed animals that come close enough to pet them, squeal as they come too close for comfort, and just smile because of how ridiculous the whole experience is. We went to Safari Park yesterday for our staff social, a one-a-month outing to help us feel connected and get to know each other better since most of our time is spent on our personal ministries. The Highfields drove their van separately, and the rest of us piled into the back of Mike's truck. Adam and I documented the experience, Julie and Dan tried to avoid the animals as much as possible, and Whit and Kelsey tried to rile the animals up the best they could.

If you have never been, this is what it looks like. GIANT animals come up to your car - and stick their heads in your windows!! If you want them to go away, the only thing you can do is to keep driving.You get to see (and pet!) many varieties of animals, including zebras! (We saw 7!)

Julie was afraid to feed them. Besides the animals being silly, Julie provided a lot of entertainment trying to escape them.

The funniest part of the day was when 3 huge camels came to our open truck bed to get some dinner. We had already seen camels and knew they were a little aggressive - one of them had stolen one of our buckets of feed. We approached the next set of camels slowly, and I decided to try to feed it since I hadn't fed the other camels. I held out the bucket and everyone was hoping he wouldn't steal the bucket. As soon as his lips touched the bucket, he grabbed it away!! I had no hope trying to get it back - he was strong and he turned away from us, saying "nope, it's mine now." Then other camels came and caused a ruckus - us standing in the truck bed, camels' giant heads everywhere, and feed being poured out all over Dan multiple times. And Lisa got the whole thing on video!

Such a weird juxtaposition - farm and safari creatures in Virginia with a beautiful backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Whit enjoying feeding the animals.

We went to Safari Park for one of our first dates/trips back in 2007. It was just as fun coming back again with our friends.

The great part about Safari Park is that it's really two zoo experiences in one. You drive around and feed tons of animals that come right up to you, and then you get to walk around and see caged animals and pet some more. We went on the kangaroo walkabout and this little guy was sitting right on the path, outside of his fenced-in area. We figured out we could get up really close to him, and eventually I got up the courage to feed him and pet him! He was the most fun animal I've ever fed - his lips were really soft and he didn't slobber all over my hand - very professional. And he had the softest fur!! It was like rabbit fur.

My other favorite part of the day was getting to pet these little lemurs! Whit hopped the fence and went up to their cage to feed them, so of course I did the same (fortunately we didn't get caught). They were so cute eating out of my hand! One of them even held hands with me with its little tiny fingers! They were sooooo cute - and the one on the right had a little tiny lemur baby!! I LOVED it! I'm ready for the next adventure, Safari Park!