Virginia Safari Park Pics! :o)

[Irishgrrrl]

Wednesday was our fifth anniversary, and DH and I went to the Virginia Safari Park to celebrate. We had SUCH a great time!!! For any of you who live anywhere near Natural Bridge, Virgnia, I would HIGHLY recommend it! Here's their website: http://www.virginiasafaripark.com/

It was beyond awesome! They have a huge zoo which is more like a nature preserve. The animals roam freely in a huge fenced area (like 180 acres or so) and you can drive your car through and feed the animals. Of course, the animals have figured out that cars = food, so they basically mob your car! LOL!

I'm going to try to post some pics, but I'm not sure how well it's going to go, since I'm still getting used to the new PS . . .

Yay, it worked! This is an antelope walking in front of our car.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

A camel, who was very cute! (As you can see, he is behind a fence. Some of the animals weren't allowed to get right up to the cars, but you could still feed them because the road was right next to the fence and they could reach over.)

 

[Irishgrrrl]

. . .

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Gratuitous bling shot . . . oh, yeah, and there's an elk in there too!!!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Some of the elk were absolutely ENORMOUS!!! This guy is actually a pretty small one . . . most were much bigger!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Here is a mama emu, with her baby emus! Awwww!!!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

And this emu was BEAUTIFUL! Check out those gorgeous blue eyes!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

They had three giraffes, and you could walk up onto a big platform where you could feed them! Sadly, however, the giraffes weren't in the mood to be fed, so we had to take pics from a distance.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

All of the kangaroos were hanging out in their little house, since it was pretty hot.

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Some llamas! You can see in the first picture that there are a bunch of them right in front of our car. We had to wait like forever for them to move before we could go any further! LOL!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

They had some very . . . um . . . well-fed potbellied pigs!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Here are some water buffalo. In the second pic, you can see that he's actually in the water with only his head sticking out! It was REALLY hot!!!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

OK, I have to admit, these guys made me NERVOUS!!! They are watusi cattle, and they have these HUGE horns, and they got REALLY close to the car!!! Like REALLY CLOSE TO THE CAR!!! I was afraid I'd have some 'splainin to do to our insurance agent! LOL!

And how adorable are those babies?!?!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

OK, here are the zebras. These guys were SOOOO CUTE!!! The one we fed kinda dumped a bunch of food in our car, all over DH's lap! ROFL!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

OK, that's it! BTW, I took all of these pics with my phone because we forgot to bring our camera. I'm amazed at how clear they turned out!

 

[Tuckins1]

Cool! Oh my, those pigs were.... FAT!!!!!

 

[radiantquest]

Totally awesome! Those are great pictures. I love animals. What a great idea for an anny. I am def. going to do that. Since we already have our plans this year I am going to have to remember it for next year. Hey, its close enough we could do it for a weekend trip. Thank you.

 

[iheartscience]

Wow, that place looks awesome! I've never even heard of it! I need to add that to the list of places to visit! And I loved your pics, especially the zebra ones with the hilarious captions!

And happy anniversary!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Tuckins ~ Yes, they were EXTREMELY fat! And I think they must be born obese . . . there were a few piglets there, and they were fat too! LOL!

RQ ~ You should definitely go! DH and I live about three hours from there, and we just drove down and back in one day. We spent about two hours there, and that was plenty of time to see everything. Definitely doable as a day trip! So what are your anniversary plans for this year? Anything fun?

Thing ~ Thanks! And yes, that zebra was awesome! Not only did he dump food all over DH, he also tried to nip him! DH tried to pet him, but the zebra made it very clear that he just wanted fed!

 

[Hera]

I love your pics! I especially love the camel and the emus

 

[yssie]

Oh my goodness, how amazing!!! I love the pic of the zebra sticking its head in through your window and I've never seen baby emus before, how cute!

Wow, this is going on the East Coast must-do! Your phone-pics turned out amazingly well, too

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Hera ~ Thanks! One of the camels actually stole our bucket of feed! We held it out to him so he could stick his nose in and get some feed, but instead he grabbed the edge of the bucket and pulled . . . HARD! Fortunately, we were almost out of feed anyway. But still . . . rude camel!

Yssie ~ Thank you! Those baby emus were so cute, and there were like a million of them everywhere! My phone is an HTC Hero, and I sometimes think it takes better pics than our camera does!

 

[Luckyeshe]

Oh my goodness!! How cute are these pictures!! You must have had a blast!

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Lucky, we so did! I can't wait to go back, and bring my parents along! I think they'd love it too!

 

[cellentani]

Irishgrrrl, I really enjoyed reading your thread, and what great photos! I was thinking about doing Skyline Drive next month, and this looks like a wonderful thing to do with the kids! Going to look up the website now...

 

[Irishgrrrl]

Thanks, Cellentani! Glad you liked it! And I think it's pretty close to Skyline Drive, so that would work out great for you! Have fun!

 

[treefrog]

Great pics Irishgrrrrrl! The pic of the zebra feeding your husband is pretty funny! I've never heard of the place but will keep it in mind. I recently discovered Skyline Drive and have done a small part of that twice now. Amazing drive & lots to see there. I've been doing some of my recent deer fawn photography there - Big Meadows.

Happy Anniversary!

Treefrog