Wild Animal Park

The San Diego Wild Animal Park was the next place we visited. It was quite a bit more relaxed than our day at Sea World. Once again, we got a nice discount since Chris is in the military. It's a nice place to visit.

The kids posed for me in a storks' nest.

This gorilla was happy to pose for me as well.

The kids fed some ducks and various other birds.

Clara pretended to be a ferocious lion.

There were 7 lion cubs. We were able to get up really close. This picture was actually taken through a window, but had it not been there I would've been able to touch 7 lion cubs and an adult male lion. Personally, I'm thankful for the window.

The fact that there was a tram ride around the park to see most of the animals was really what made this day so much more relaxed. Here's Chris and the kids preparing for our tram ride.

If you look closely between the 2 bigger giraffes you'll see the 'baby' giraffe. They said the baby was just about 6' tall.

One of the cooler things to do was feeding the lorikeets. You could buy a small cup of nectar. They showed you how to hold it and when you walked into the aviary, the lorikeets flew onto your hand to drink from it. The kids were pretty enamored by it all. Clara was a little apprehensive though, because they had cautioned us that the birds would bite if you tried to pet them.

'Jonathan the fearless one', however, kept trying to pet the lorikeets and point at them. Luckily, he was not bitten. Unfortunately, Chris can't say the same.

There were quite a bit of activities for the kids. Unfortunately, we didn't make it into the petting zoo before it closed, but we did manage to catch the last ride on the carousel.

We only caught one show for which I volunteered. I think Chris was a little surprised (I'm not usually that person), but I was on vacation after all! After I volunteered, I learned I was to be a contestant for a trivia game about animals, which I was quite poor at. The one question I answered correctly awarded me this chance to hold a 10 ft burmese python. The ONLY reason I'm not freaking out here is because someone else was holding the head!

Jonathan wasn't too happy about me being 5 ft away from him (especially after almost losing me to a snake!), so he came up to compete with me (and protect me).

One last treat for competing in the show, we all got to meet the camel up close. The camel really liked Clara. It kept trying to kiss her and she was willing, but we stopped her before they got too far :)

There was a little playground for the kids to run around in. Don't you love that face?!

Posing for one last picture. The scenery around the park was almost as impressive as the animals.