Well, it was a jam-packed weekend and there are lots of pictures so please click

Friday morning we spent cleaning since Rochelle would be housesitting for us.

We left around 1:30 pm for Camp Verde which is about 77 miles away, so a fairly short drive when you think of it. Mike’s band was playing up there for the weekend, so we went with him to get away for a couple of days.

The sound man for the band drove Mike’s truck full of equipment so he could drive with us in my vehicle. We stopped to unload the equipment and then we went and checked into the hotel room.

We had a room with two queen beds, so Little Girl was going to have to sleep in a grown-up bed all by herself for the very first time.

She absolutely refused to sleep under the covers, so she slept on top of the comforter with her own blanket. Mike put two chairs up against one side of the bed, and took the hotel pillow and used that to keep her from rolling off the other side. It was probably a good thing, really, because that kid was all over that bed…lol!

On Saturday morning, we got up and ate breakfast at a nice little diner we had eaten at a few years ago when we were there with a friend visiting from England. Then it was off to Out of Africa Wildlife Park to see some animals!

We got there just in time to take the shuttle up the hill to see the snake show. There was an anaconda, a boa constrictor and this lovely cobra.

This cobra was on the other side of a fence. I could have reached out and touched it. Not that I wanted to! But it was quite interesting to be that close to a cobra and actually see him “hood up”.

After the snake show, we walked around the park for a bit and saw all kinds of beautiful animals - a lot closer than you would normally see them in a zoo.

A lioness basking in the sun…

Two hyenas…

Tigers…

Then it was time to go to the Tiger Splash Show. Now here’s the thing about this show…the tigers are not “trained” to do tricks. The show is all about interaction between the handlers and the tigers - and just basically play! They are in a large enclosure with a pool, and the handlers play with the tigers and entice them into the pool (tigers are good swimmers and enjoy swimming). It was really fun watching the tigers play because they really just look like kitty cats when they play. Albeit very large kitty cats with very sharp claws and teeth, but still kitty cats.

This is Boom Boom the rhinoceros…

Boom Boom has an amazing story that luckily had a happy ending. He was at some other zoo or park that closed down and he was auctioned off to the highest bidder who was a hunter and was going to use him for a canned hunt (google it if you don’t know what a canned hunt is, it makes me too sick to my stomach to actually write it). However, Mark Ecko of *ecko unlimited, managed to negotiate his repurchase for twice what the hunter had paid for him, and Boom Boom now lives in safety and happiness at Out of Africa. For the whole story, click here.

Next we went on the Serengeti Safari, which is basically a bus that takes you out amongst some of the non-predatory animals.

There were zebras so close to the bus we could have reached out and touched them…

Do you know how you can tell whether zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes? The nose knows. The nose is black, and that is their skin color. So they are black with white stripes. And every zebra’s stripe pattern is unique, not unlike a fingerprint.

This beautiful guy is a white tiger…

He is behind a fence for obvious reasons, but the bus driver got out and interacted with him (through the fence) for a bit. They played tug of war with a stick. But he said the tiger always wins. ;)

This is Kebo…

Before you board the bus, you are given a carrot stick to feed to Kebo the giraffe. Giraffes do not have teeth in the top of their mouths, so they cannot bite. They also have very long tongues with which to grab carrot sticks from little hands. Little Girl got to feed carrot sticks to a giraffe and she thought that was pretty amazing. (This is not her feeding the giraffe - I took a movie of that which I hope to post a clip of if I ever get time to edit it!)

After the Serengeti Safari, we decided to drive up to Strawberry which is only about 20 miles away, but a few thousand feet higher. And the leaves are starting to change. And it’s cold! LG saw the colored leaves and said “Fall!” which may not sound that thrilling to you, but considering she lives in the desert where the leaves don’t change, it excited me that all the work I did with her during the week we talked about fall colors paid off!

We came back to Camp Verde, got a pizza, ate dinner and Mike went to gig while LG and I stayed in the hotel room and went to sleep.

This morning we got up, ate breakfast at the diner again, and came back down to Phoenix.

The worst part of the weekend was the fact that I had no internet while I was stuck in a hotel room with a sleeping toddler. And the beds were mighty uncomfortable.

The best part was seeing my child enjoying animals up close and personal and hanging out with my family. And that trumps all the bad stuff every time.