wild animal park

On our second day in San Diego we visited the well-known wild animal park outside the city. It's a large very nice zoo combined with a huge section where animals are wandering around on open land. You travel through that section on tram cars to simulate being out on safari.

Before we got to the safari, we stopped in the Lorikeet sanctuary and did some bird feeding.


The girls really enjoyed feeding a bird or two at a time at first, but as more birds descended upon them, the girls got a little nervous and overwhelmed. Erin no longer looked like she was having a good time here:

But there was no getting these birds off once they decided to visit, until the food cup was empty and they moved on to someone else. Erin had the most birds on her and was definitely the most upset about it, but as soon as the food and birds were gone she asked, "Can we get more?" And later in the day she asked to return to the Lorikeets.

Shortly after escaping "the birds" we went to butterfly world. Inside, the butterflies were flying everywhere, all around, and landing on the ground too, so we had to watch where we stepped. The girls forgot all about the aggressive Lorikeets and were dying to have some butterflies land on them.

And eventually, the butterflies did visit them, attracted to their bright hats. Soon all three girls had a butterfly on their head and a crowd of spectators to see them.





On to the safari, which had so much to see on either side of the tram that sometimes it seemed like there wasn't enough time to take it all in.

And after our ride we wandered around to see some more of the zoo, including a lioness resting right near the observation glass.

And when we reached the gorillas it was hard to find any of them as they were all resting in various hiding places. Then all at once it seemed their nap time was over and it was gorilla social hour, so we hung out a while there and watched their antics.

Eventually we found the petting zoo, which instead of the typical goats and sheep contained several varieties of deer, and the girls loved spending time with them and feeding them.




We were lucky. We saqw nearly all of two huge parks in two days. Had there been crowds we wouldn't have made it to nearly as many attractions, which maybe would have been alright with Kate because she complained nearly all day each day about all the walking we were doing.