Safari in Our Own Backyard

Staying home for the holidays this year was both easy and hard. Easy because by now we're quite used to not being able to travel but hard because we are very much missing our families in Washington and the Midwest. So, to make the best of it, we decided to take advantage of some of the safe (read: outdoor) activities near here. One of those activities took us to the Tennessee Safari Park, a drive-through zoo, about 90 minutes away.

There is a giant billboard in Memphis advertising the Safari Park, and I'd heard anecdotally that it was a fun place to visit, especially with kids, so we packed up the car, ready for a day of adventure. We were expecting a good time...but Tennessee Safari Park far exceeded our expectations.

We chose to do the walk-through portion of the zoo first since we'd been sitting in the car for so long. First up was the budgie house, where we tried--successfully--to get the birds to land on our popsicle sticks of food. We've done this before at other zoos, and I'm always impressed at how still everyone can be when the birds are eating.

After the parakeets, we looked at some monkeys, checked out the pygmy goats, and fed the giraffe. I think the girls bonded with the giraffe due to their mutual love of carrot sticks.

Before setting out on in the car to feed more animals, we paused at the car to feed ourselves. Despite the many, many different types of animals at the park, I think the weirdest one we saw was in the parking lot. There was a mouse hanging from the passenger door of the truck next to us!

We thought it was fake, so of course we had to investigate

After lunch, we proceeded through the 5.5-mile path ready to get up close and personal with some animals. We knew what we were getting ourselves into, but we were still surprised by how up close and personal we got.

These exotic animals--camels, ostriches, zebras, and more--know that cars=food, so they are not shy about poking their heads through the window to get at that food bucket. So many shrieks and giggles from our crew. 

The biggest laughs were a result of the llamas who trotted alongside our car as we drove, confident we would eventually stop and give them some food (which we did). We were less enamored by the emus, however, especially when one of them stole an entire bucket of feed!

Regardless, we had a great time and a very tired bunch of kiddos on the way back to Memphis. Even though we didn't get to spend Christmas break the way we would have wanted, we're still grateful for the adventures we had here at home.