San Diego Vacation Part 5

After a nice, relaxing day on Wednesday, we piled into the van and drove about 20 miles to the Escondido area to get to the Wild Animal Park. As we were entering, we ran into some friends who live just a few blocks from us. We knew they were also vacationing in the area, and we'd known that they would be at Sea World on Tuesday, so we were surprised to run into them here instead. We had a quick chat, but the kids were anxious to go and see things, so off we went.

When you first enter the Wild Animal Park, it seems a lot like the zoo. I wondered why we had driven all the way out there for a while. We had decided that we would start with the bus tour (instead of leaving it for the end like we had with the zoo), and as we worked our way down toward the tour area, we stopped to ride a carousel (again, the 3 for 1 passes got us on this for free instead of having to pay a few dollars for it) and visit the discovery area, where they had a place for the adults to sit while the kids played with puzzles, toys, puppets, paper and crayons, etc, all under a nice, cool awning. The kids get to do that sort of thing fairly often when we're home, too, but we didn't mind taking a break. *grin*

We ended up taking the "short" way down to the bus tour, which involved a platform with an elevator to take us down about 30 feet in elevation. I was starting to realize how much bigger than the zoo this park was. We passed a bright yellow hot-air balloon that we thought about riding (it would have cost us about $70 for the whole family for a 4 or 5 minute ride, though), and made our way to the bus area. Once we were loaded on, we discovered that what makes the Wild Animal Park so different from the zoo is that they have large, multi-acre exhibits based on environment rather than animals. We saw the savanna area mostly, which had at least 10 different groups of animals all living together in the same exhibit. We saw a herd of antelope decide to take off running down one long hill and up another, all in unison. We saw two different kinds of rhinoceroses, about 10 giraffes, including a few babies, lots of antelope, gazelles, etc, and learned a lot about them from the tour guide. The tour guides sure seem to know their stuff, as they can tell us all about the animal's native behaviors, the status of their native environments as concerns habitat loss, and the names of most of the animals that live there.

We also saw several people who had paid (a lot) more money to either tour these various large exhibits on Segway scooters with off road tires or in a large, safari like pickup truck that drove inside the exhibit itself for extreme close up pictures.

These large exhibits are kind of a cross between a zoo and an actual safari. The animals are enclosed and (relatively) nearby, as with a zoo, but they are behaving as if they were in the wild and interacting with other animals, as with a safari. It was fascinating to me. I think the kids did a good job to not complain too much about how long it took. *grin*

After the bus tour, we made sure to see the elephants (and zoo keeper), the lions (the alpha male was sitting on top of a broken down jeep under a tree near the front of the exhibit), and we even managed to run across some native deer on our way back up that had made it into the park. We ate lunch at one of the restaurants (hot dogs and somewhat fancy sandwiches with the trimmings for nearly the cost of the balloon ride), stopped at an oasis that had water spraying out of kid friendly statues to help cool you down, and worked our way back up toward the front.

We stopped at a petting area, where my daughter very carefully made sure to pet every single specimin in the area, visited the discovery area again, where we had a lovely conversation with the employee on duty who complimented our kids highly (that always makes a parent feel good) and discussed our church (specifically, the San Diego Temple, which she had heard was closed for a while), and rode the carousel a few more times.

We learned that our good preparation of bringing water bottles that had been frozen overnight was even better when you remembered to do it. I guess our day off had caused us to forget our preparations.

I'm learning now, too, that without pictures, some of the specifics of the memories are fading kind of quickly (of course, the week that we've been back has been VERY hectic, so that contributes too).

In the end, I decided that the Wild Animal Park was worth visiting, but I don't know that I would want to go again with small children because they don't have the patience to enjoy the uniqueness of this attraction. At least, my kids don't seem to have that kind of patience.

More to come later.