Hanging out with kangaroos!

We weren't able to ride the new ride at Sea World (Electric Eel rollercoaster) because of technical difficulties or the new ride at Legoland (a real submarine) because it doesn't open until next month, but we were able to walk through the brand new exhibit on Monday at San Diego Safari Park - Walkabout Australia. It was amazing! They also have a lemur walkabout, but the lemurs weren't active when we walked through their enclosure. The wallabies kept a little farther away, but the kangaroos literally hopped right in front of us. There were several times I could have easily touched a kangaroo because it was right beside me, but we weren't allowed to touch them. I have never been so close to a kangaroo before aside from the baby kangaroo they often have at the petting zoo at the Lycoming County Fair. We enjoyed our day at the San Diego Zoo earlier in our trip. The zoo has a wider variety of animals. For example, we really enjoyed the koala bears at the zoo, and they didn't have any of those at the Safari Park, but the Safari Park is much larger (1,800 acres) and the animals

look like they are in something closer to a natural environment. The Safari Park has many different experiences but most of them cost extra money (zipline, ropes course, balloon ride, etc.). The one that was most appealing to me was one where we would have driven around really close to many animals - sort of like being on an African safari, but they were really expensive so we didn't do any of the extras.

I had four things on the schedule that I was hoping we'd do (that didn't cost extra) - ride the Africa tram, see the cheetah run 70mph, visit the animal ambassador stage, and attend a keeper talk (was leaning toward the tiger one). Our timing was off for all of the keeper talks, and Oliver had enough walking by 3:00 so we skipped the cheetah run. We did ride the Africa tram, heard two different presentations at the animal ambassador stage (two different tortoises - the second was about a pancake tortoise that is the fastest tortoise (1 ft per second) and also attended an excellent bird show that included an owl, peregrine falcon, parrots, etc.

One bird did an amazing job with talking and imitating various whistles and sounds. Although we didn't listen to any keeper talks, Nadia did ask the volunteers stationed at many exhibits throughout the park many, many questions - especially at the elephants, gorillas, and tigers. The kids also fed some lorikeets nectar (that other people generously shared with them) and brushed some goats. It was the hottest day of our trip and so the kids also got themselves thoroughly wet in some of the water play areas.

Paul's parents skipped this outing. When we got back, we picked them up and had dinner at In and Out, which is a fast food burger restaurant where the food is really fresh. As in I watched them peeling potatoes to make French fries and slicing onions for the burgers! We had cooked dinner at "home" the previous two nights so it was a treat to eat out on Monday night. If you are ever in southern California, I recommend visiting the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, just be prepared to do some walking as according to my phone we walked 6.3 miles!