Wild Animal Park

This is the last week of Hannah being off track. When she returns to school next Monday, she'll go 12 weeks without a single holiday or break and that will take her to the end of her second grade school year. And then because the school schedule is changing, her track is the lucky one that will have the entire months of June and July off! But for now, we're trying to make the best of this week, so today we headed to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. We were hoping to go as a family at the end of the week, but time off wasn't possible for Steven right now due to some deadlines, so we'll go back as a family in June.

We left the house shortly before eight and were blessed with a beautiful morning and clear roadways and made it to the park in just over an hour. Our portable DVD players weren't working and the girls both sat well for the long car ride and we enjoyed all the green hills and colorful wildflowers growing along the freeway thanks to all the rain we've had. We arrived to the Park just after it opened.Having read on their website in recent months of the lion cubs that had been born in November, we made our way to the Lion Camp exhibit first. This exhibit is fairly new and it was amazing! We loved it so much that we came back a couple of times to see the lion and lioness and of course the seven new lion cubs. One of the times in which we came back to the exhibit, the male lion was participating in an act with one of the lionesses that could no way be mistaken for what he was doing. :X Hannah asked what he was doing, and in the next breath, she asked if he was tickling her. LOL. As I motioned for us move away from the masses of people, so that I could briefly explain to her what was happening, she became distracted and ran to see the lion cubs. :::Whew::: She usually doesn't forget anything so I'm surprised she hasn't asked again what he was doing. However, she did comment at dinner about how it sounded as though the mama lion was laughing when the daddy lion was tickling her. LOL.Last year, when we briefly visited the Wild Animal Park, a new attraction was the Journey to Africa tour. This tour loads you onto trams that takes you out into the "African plains" to observe all the animals on their level. We did this shortly after arriving to the park, and in the coolness of the morning, a lot of the animals were really active, obviously as previously seen with the lions. Something that recently opened was this huge deck, high above the grounds of the park, whereas you could look out and see a panoramic view of the plains. It provided a magnificent view not only of the animal grounds below, but of the green hills that encompass the park property. And on such a beautiful morning as today, it made for a pretty picture. Making our way through some of the smaller exhibits, we headed in the direction of the gorillas. And upon arriving at the gorilla exhibit, I again was faced with the possibility of a 'birds and the bees' discussion with my oldest daughter, as two gorillas were sitting right smack dab in front and center of the exhibit, whereas one gorilla was being all touchy, feely with another gorilla. Ah yes, spring is in the air at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Thankfully Hannah was oblivious to the obvious and was more focused on the big gorilla in the back that was deemed Kerchak, from Disney's Tarzan.One of the last things we did while on our way out was stop and meet this little animal, this is Ruby the Kangaroo. The handlers talked about her and had her perform a few things that kangaroos do, etc. Hannah really enjoyed this.With one stop at the snack stand for a hot pretzel for the long ride home, it was off to the car to settle in for our long drive home. Again, we hit the traffic just right and really didn't hit any in our direction worth mentioning, as we made it home in just under an hour and a half. Once home the girls told Daddy all about our day, and talked about it all evening long.