Out of Africa

On Saturday, Jeff, Luke and I went to the Out of Africa Wildlife Park in Camp Verde (about an hour south-west of Flagstaff). We spent most of the day there and had a great time.

Luke slept through the entire car ride. I am baffled at how he sleeps through long rides in the car, but trying to keep him calm and happy during the 10-minute drive to and from Wal-Mart often presents a challenge! Luke is perfectly happy in his car seat if he can see us, but he is not very happy being alone in the back seat where he can only hear us.



The first thing we did was take a tram on an African Bush Safari tour.



This zebra is momma to an adorable little 5-day old baby.



Isn't she cute?! She stressed her mom out by running around to the other side of the tram out of mom's sight. And Mom had to wait for the tram to get out of her way before she could go retrieve her rambunctious child.



This is Tebo the giraffe.



We were each given a carrot as we boarded the tram to feed to either Tebo or Humphrey, the camel. Everyone held out their carrots and Tebo took them all as he walked by.

He was not shy.

Luke didn't know what to think.

It may not look like it, but these antelope can jump over an 8-foot fence from a stand-still!

Apparently, ostriches bite first, ask questions later, but they're not trying to be mean. If they were feeling mean, they would kick you in the chest and tear you open with their giant raptor-esque claw.

We were warned to avoid letting the ostrich get close enough to bite us. I'm pretty sure she had her eye on me.

Ostrich eggs! Just one of those babies is the equivalent of 2 dozen chicken eggs!

Check out those crazy long horns and the pretty white butterfly marking on his face.

This is Humphrey, the camel. Luke helped me feed him our carrot.

Humphrey was quick to move on in search of more carrots.

Another kind of antelope

This was the first time that this baby antelope had seen the trams. She was 10 days old and had just been put back in the enclosure, but she wasn't shy. She ran right up to us.

The tour guide described these guys as "Texas Long Horns on steroids." It a little hard to tell in this picture, but when they were standing up, their horns made them look like they were going to topple over to one side.

We ran into Tebo again.

After barely catching a glimpse of the poor lethargic tiger at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake, we were excited when this was our first tiger sighting at this place.

And we were even more excited when we realized how close we could get to them once we got off of the tram.

We were only about 3 feet away from this guy.

If I wanted to, I could touch that chain link fence.

It was pretty hot out there (mid to high 90's). This tiger had the right idea to cool off.

Luke fell asleep before the Tiger Splash show, but he woke up in time to see the action.

This lion and tiger were born on the same day and were never apart from 2-weeks-old on. They are now a little over two years old. The guy who commentated on the "show" told us that if they are separated, they cry.

Luke found Mom a little more interesting than the tigers. Who can blame him?

 Inside the fenced off area, there were an announcer with a mic who commentated on what was going on and told interesting facts and stories related to lions and tigers; three "prey", who ran around the grass with big toys and jumped in the pool with the big cats; and two "protectors", who's job it was to make sure things didn't get out of hand (not sure what they would have done if they had; they were standing there with nothing but pooper-scoopers).

This lioness was just a big friendly cat. She got got a belly rub at the beginning of the show. The guy scratching her tickled her big feet to show us that she was ticklish. We were told that she is always gentle and they don't worry about her getting too rough. It's the white tiger who gets a little too excited sometimes.

The lioness didn't care for the water, but the tiger loved it! He took countless flying leaps after toys into it and popped them in midair with his claws and teeth.

Love the spread eagle jumping position.

Jeff is the talented photographer behind all of these action shots.

After Tiger Splash, we walked around to see some of the other animals before the bear show. We didn't even get close to visiting all of the enclosures! The park is pretty huge, it was hot, and we thought we would be coming back with annual passes (they only cost $20 on top of the day's admission, but then we found out it had to be full-price admission - we paid two for one - and we decided to forgo the "fun passes" for now).

There was a petting zoo that consisted of two emu and a deer.

This hyena was so cute. It looked like a big, soft, cuddly dog. But it pretended I didn't exist and just kept walking when I talked to it and tried to get it's picture.

Jeff thought this was a fake crocodile. They only thing that tipped us off was that it blinked once. It stayed perfectly still.

The cute, fluffy bears actually looked up and responded when I talked to them. Every time I called out to this one, it put it's paw up to the fence like this. Adorable.

Luke was a little sweaty in the hot weather, but he didn't let that get him down. He was smiley as ever.

A capybara. This is the thing that would be swimming in the water next to me whenever my canoe capsized on the Amazon Trail. It looked like a giant gerbil.

We stopped by the snake show to see the massive python. Apparently, she had been used as a guard snake and mistreated in an effort to make her meaner. As a result, she is 75% blind, but they take good care of her at the park.

Luke and I waited in line to pet her.

We waited for all of the kids who were old enough to actually care that they were petting a big snake to go first.

Eventually, we got our turn. Luke was only mildly interested.

It was hot so we grabbed a Slurpee on our way to the bear show.

Luke trying out Daddy's sunglasses while we wait for the show to start.

The animals aren't trained in this or the tiger show. The people just play with them rather than trying to teach them to do tricks.

The bears were named Aspen and Cyprus. They weren't quite as graceful as the big cats. They bounded after the toys on the grass, were slow and labored climbing out of the pool, and got almost no air when they jumped into the pool after toys - they ended up doing belly flops every time.

It got a little dicey at one point when Cyprus grabbed one of the guys feet while he was in the water with him and wouldn't let go for quite a while. There was a bit of a struggle, but no blood. The announcer just continued with her story as if nothing was happening.

Cyprus getting ready to do a big belly flop.

We spent almost six hours at the park. It was a day well spent. And we got back just in time for me to go to the General Relief Society broadcast at the stake center and listen to inspiring counsel from wonderful church leaders (I especially LOVED President Monson's talk - "Charity never faileth"), which only improved an already stellar day.