Safari Park

We've lived in Blacksburg for 7 years and there's quite a bit that we've never done since we've lived here. Snow skiing is 1 hour away in West Virginia and we've never been. Some of the best white water rafting in the country is an hour and half away on the Gauley river and we've never been. The new river is 15 minutes away and we've never been kayaking or canoeing on it (we have tubed on it...only twice or maybe only once). This weekend was our last weekend in Blacksburg that my whole family is here. So I wanted to do something we'd never done. But skiing, kayaking, canoeing, and white water rafting are all not very toddler-friendly (thus the reason we've not done any of them since we've lived here). So we headed out to Safari Park, which is a little over an hour from our house in Natural Bridge, VA.

Safari Park is a drive-thru zoo. You pay an entry fee and buy some buckets of feed, then you drive through the zoo (very very slowly) and you can feed the animals. We came prepared. It's best to go in a minvan (because then you're allowed to have your sliding doors open) and an already dirty car (because your car will be FILLED with animal feed). Ethan sat in the front seat with his window open so he could see and pet the animals but didn't have to feed them, Brynn was strapped into her car seat with her door open so she had a very close view, I sat in the back seat so I could lure the animals practically into our car to eat from the bucket of feed, Blythe roamed all through the car, feeding and petting the animals, and sticking her head out of the sun roof, and Braden drove and fed animals so Brynn could see them up close.

The llamas are fun, but a little obnoxious.

The ostriches, emus, and rheas are funny and the way they eat is funny. There were also some super-cute baby ostriches.

The camels are not allowed to come right up to your car (they are behind a loose fence), but you can drive as close to them as you want. They are sneaky and like to steal whole buckets of feed.

There were also lots of deer, reindeer, and other animals I don't know the names. There were zebras, buffalo, and yaks. The yak peed while standing next to our car. Peed a lot. Apparently it made an impression as last night Ethan made a gun out of legos and pretended to squirt us all with yak pee. Nice.

This guy was waiting for us to drive up and fortunately did not try to get in our car. The kids had fun touching his antlers, which were actually very soft.

We started out with 4 buckets of feed and ended up with only 1 empty bucket. Our other 3 were stolen by sneaky animals.

After driving through, we parked and walked through the petting zoo area with giraffes, flamingos, kangaroos, and lots of other things.

It was REALLY hot and humid and no breeze though, so in hindsight, it would have been better to just buy some more feed and then drive through again (in our air conditioned car).

But anyway, we wrapped it up with a picnic lunch and then headed back to Blacksburg. It was a fun time and I'm glad we went because I don't think there is anything like that in North Carolina (even though there's LOTS of other things North Carolina has to offer that we are looking forward to).