Family Vacation, Day 3 (Afternoon)--Wildlife Safari

After Coos Bay, we quickly headed east about two hours to Winston, Oregon (near Roseburg) where they have a Wildlife Safari. A pretty amazing twist on a zoo, you drive into the animals' habitat area where you are "caged" in your car and the animals roam free. I was surprised how close many of the animals were, but there were some quite a distance off from us as well. The kids loved seeing all the animals, although they were almost equally as elated that they got to drive in the van without their seat belts on. Now, that's pretty cool when you're two and four years old, don't you think? After the drive-through safari, they have a small village area with a lot more animals to see, a petting zoo, camel rides, and a little zoo train. We even were able to "pet" the tortoise during his daily, very slow, tortoise walk:).

In case any of you were wondering what our kids would look like as sheep:).
Here's Skyler...
And Spencer...

And, finally, Kylene...

The classic "kiss me" picture next to the camel. I should upload my pictures of me with the camels at the pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt to compare!

All aboard the zoo train!

I had to include this one of Skyler since we took so few of him on this trip (again). It must be because he's so often in the stroller or car seat! Poor, Skyler:). Gotta love the tongue, though! (Classic Barney trait!)

Camels in the safari.

Elephant waiting to wash a car. For only $20 more, it's guaranteed NOT to get your car clean, or so they say.

This gorgeous creature (emu) was walking and pecking at our car window right in our faces. I was amazed at how close it came to "pecking" without once touching our van. It had to be trained, don't you think?

We couldn't get a good shot of this giraffe's face because it was busy eating lunch!

I like this perspective shot:

There were electric fences between us and the bears in this area; a comforting thought!

Am I still in the picture, daddy? I'm sucking in and everything!

And that was the grand vacation! I'll leave out the part about the miserable 2 1/2 hour drive home with three very tired children in the back seat having melt downs the entire way. Those are the parts you want to forget; hopefully the happy moments are what endure:).

It was hard to let Kyle go back to work on Tuesday after 10 days off. Man, if only we could pay the bills without his working!