vacation part 5 (thursday)

We woke up Thursday morning and had plans to go to Wilderness Walk with Greg's mom and sister. I was thinking this was going to be a nice little kids petting type zoo with animals behind cages. I was wrong. You walk into this place and it starts off innocently enough with some fish to feed.

Then we walked thru the gate and into the animal nursery. Ellie hated it from the get-go. She was afraid of everything. Wouldn't touch a thing. The girls working there had pulled out a really fuzzy bunny and a hedgehog for us to touch. There were big fat bunnies and baby sheep eating... just walking at our feet, that we were free to touch. The baby goats were so cute (these 2 anyways... wait until I tell you about the other 2 baby goats). There were kittens for sale (?) and a momma kitty... there were guinea pigs... they were all very cute and most were in cages (which made me kinda sad.)



As we walked out of the nursery to our left was a large fenced in area of deer. They were free to roam the park as they wished... which I didn't realize until they lept the fence and started coming towards us... scared the shit out of me! I mean, these are wild animals... no matter how used to humans they are... they could just snap at any moment and we'd be in trouble... it was kinda scary. They also associated humans with food... you could buy corn/other food and feed them out of your hands. So they assumed that everyone had food... they'd walk right up to you and nudge you in the back or sniff your hands to see if you had anything... yikes! It was quite cool to see them up close... they were very pretty and had beautiful fuzzy antlers.


After seeing the deer we checked out the 2 black bears. They were pacing. Over and over again the same path. SO sad.

Then we went to check out the tiger. We were warned that the tiger didn't like strollers. (seriously?!) The stroller, Ellie and I stayed behind the black curtain...

As we left the tigers 2 beautiful (or so I thought) white geese walked towards us. All the sudden one's beak went up in the air and he/she (?) started honking and walking (fast) towards Greg's feet. The damn thing bit his shoe!

At this point I didn't feel like this was good'ol family fun.

We turned around to head out on the trail... walked past the racoons, otter, turkeys, ostriches, peacocks, a variety of other birds, horses (which by the way had this sign posted) Caution - I Bite... (good family fun, remember!) but we kept going... when out of nowhere came these two characters... at first we went, "awww aren't they cute!" But soon enough we realized what little shits they were. They jumped and pooped all over the place. They ran the joint. Seriously. They were everywhere. Ellie was in her stroller and they scared her by jumping up on her in the stroller... they tried eating our bags, etc from the back basket of the stroller... they tore off and chased each other while grotty poop pellets just pored out of their butts. Gross I know. They ran all over the other animals areas, thru the woods and even jumped all over the "people" areas like this... and they found so much pleasure in head butting our legs. Nuts, seriously. I've never seen anything like it. I just keep laughing out loud when I think of these two little terds. For the rest of our time there Ellie played with gramma melly in the sandbox, on the swing and in the play house. Here are some more pics of our morning at Wilderness Walk.
We survived wilderness walk without any bites, scrapes and clean shoes... thank goodness (only kidding... it was an adventure)... and headed to Coop's for lunch... pizza buffet... num! Rather than eat this: My strange (!) daughter decided she wanted to eat this: yes 2 bowls of peas
We then spent a few hours at Greg's mom and grandma's house... had a yummy key lime dessert and visited... then we headed back to the cabin for dinner and a little bean bag throwing... that will be another post... this one has been way to long!!