Our field trip to the Natural Bridge Caverns Wildlife Ranch and Safari was AWESOMETASTIC!!

We had so much fun. The fun started right at the front gate. As we pulled up to the ticket booth, we were greeted by a very pleasant woman. She told all about what to expect while in the park and she gave us our complimentary (yes folks free) bag of animal feed. As we were about to pull away safety girl pops up from the back seat and says "I want to buy a bag of animal food" so, she pulls out her little change purse and begins counting her nickels and dimes, this touches the very nice ticket seller and she gives safety girl two bags of feed cus she thought it was so cute (and it was) that she paid with her own money. So off we drove.

First, we had a quick pee break after all it was a hour and a half drive there. Finally we approached the gate to the wild life area. We slowly drive into the gate (it's a 5 mile per hour speed limit) and right away we see some Watusi, bison, deer, and several other wonderful creatures.

Safety girl tosses some food out of the car window just like the information booklet says to do, and the watusi comes up to car to eat it!! Well this watusi was pretty smart cus he figured out that we had the food so he stuck his head right in the window of the car (let me just tell you he needed a tic-tack and bad) and ate food right out of her hand!! The 6 foot span of his horns were the only thing preventing him from telling one of kids to shove over and make some room for him. LOL

We drove on some more and all you could hear form the kids in the back was gasps and "look over here" and "wow, Look at that" My son was the official guide for our tour. He had the information booklet and would look up the animals that we would point out and he would read the information provided in the book.

We made our way around the twists and turns of the path each bend having us on the edge of our seat in anticipation of what we might see. All the while safety girl, who was in charge of rationing out the animal food, kept asking are we almost to the zebras?? Not yet safety girl was told about 90 times. ;)

We finally pull into the section that shows pictures of zebra on the sign. We were all pretty excited at this point. Lukas begins to read us the fact sheet about the zebra's while we twist and turn down the path we are straining and craining our necks to try to find some animals (at this point we had not gone this long with out seeing an animal). Finally we round the bend and we see stripes!! We pull up closer to where they are and stop the car. We all roll down our windows and toss out some food in the hopes that they would come over and see us. They did!! They came right up to the car and stuck their heads in and let us touch them and my mom leaned in and kissed the one right at her window. You would think that this would have shocked him right?? No way he kept popping his head in the window for her to kiss him again!! I kid you not. I think they are engaged now, wonder how she will break it to my step-dad poor guy. LOL

Just a little tip for you... If you ever decide to do something like this large birds such as rhea's and emu and ostriches are aggressive (I mean aggressive kinda like me with the last piece of cake;)). They were tapping the windows with their beaks it was funny but a little disturbing (all I could see was a scene from Jurassic park.... the rapters are gonna get us ahhhhhhhh) LOL

After we exited the drive thru area which takes about an hour or so we went to the gift shop and the petting area. Maddy and Riss each got a stuffed animal Lukas got a really pretty fleece blanket and I got a really cool zebra mask (Thank you very much Mom).

The best part is that you can do the drive thru part as many times as you want to. (well, until they close)

We did the drive thru twice and it was like a whole new adventure we had different animals come up to car this time and the animals had moved around and we were able so see ones that we had not seen the first time around. Like I said we had an awesometastic time.