African Lion Safari

My girls love animals.  Behaving like them, watching them, caring for them.  It doesn't matter what the animal is - Cold blooded or warm, scaly and rough or fluffy and soft, wild at heart or domesticated - as long as they get to see them, pet them and basically just marvel at them.  So we tend to visit places that give us a chance to encounter as many different types of animals as possible, and as close up as possible.  Imagine how excited the girls were when we told them we were heading to a safari park with hundreds of free roaming animals.

The African Lion Safari is in Cambridge, Ontario.  It opened it's gates almost 45 years ago and has grown to house over 100 different species of birds and animals (over 1,000 animals in all).  The Game Reserve is 9 km (about 6 miles) of road that wind through over 750 acres of land.  Home to mostly endangered or threatened species, it is a place for them to roam freely while you are the one in the cage (your car).  The animals truly do roam free and you must keep your windows and doors shut at all times even if it seems like the animals are not going to harm you.  They get very close - in fact, we had one ostrich that wanted to see what was in our trunk and kept pecking at it - and they can come out of nowhere.  Quite the adventure.

First we had to let our little monkey's be monkey's.

       

Getting ready to head through the gates into the wild!  I don't know if the girls were more excited about seeing the animals or being in a moving car without seat belts and car seats.

And this is the reason all pictures were taken through the glass from inside the well closed car.

This guy kept following us.  And pecked at our trunk for awhile.

A deer crossing the road.  I came all the way to Canada to experience this?  :)

Once we finished our drive through the Game Reserves it was off to see what else they had in store for us.  First stop, Cotton Candy.  It is MadHatter's favorite treat and her Papa knows just how to make her smile.  And for the littlest one in our group, it was her first time.  I think she liked it!

We took in the bird show.  And Cousin A even got to be a part of the act...

We rode an elephant.  A couple of times...

We cooled off from the heat...

And took a train ride through the park...

And that wasn't even all.  This place also boasts a huge water park.  Good thing we knew this before leaving home because the kids would have been very disappointed to not have been able to do this...

Truly a magical, wonderful day spent with family!