With The Kids At Charleston

I almost forgot this last post from when the kids were visiting over Easter break.  We took a little road trip to Charleston and brought some fishing poles. We went to the docks by the oyster company and got situated.

Here's Siena trying her luck.

 Under the watchful eye of a wary seagull.

The view from the dock, looking at the oyster company.

And looking back at the fisher men. See them in the middle?

Looking to the interior of the bay. If you look very carefully you can see a group of brave kayakers in the distance.

While we were there we also drove down Cape Arago Highway and stopped at some of the parks. There is Yoakam Point State Park, Sunset Bay State Park, Shore Acres State Park, and ending at Arago State Park.

It was a little chilly that day, but it was still pretty!

Wildlife Safari, The Rest

We continue on through the animal park. After the bison were these elk.

The view was pretty awesome. I wish I owned this 600 acres. Not necessarily with all these animals though.

I was a little disappointed that the giraffes and elephants weren't out and about, or at least in larger areas.

Indian elephants.

African elephants.

Some of these I don't know. Different kinds of deer and antelope.

We think the little white deer like creatures in the back are somehow color coded, like sex-link chickens. We saw a bunch of the white ones with a few brown ones with antlers hanging our nearby. One in particular brown one was hot on the trail of a white one. Like spring fling thing in the air type of pursuit. Don't know what the big hairy yak things are.

Monkey Island. A couple of gibbons.

Wildlife Safari is supposed to be known for their cheetah breeding program. I was rather disappointed that this was the only one we saw and it was hard to see him because their enclosure was so far back. 

Unlike these Sumatran tigers whose enclosure was right next to the road.

All in all it wasn't too bad. I guess I was expecting more openness and more animals roaming around in that openness.  But I guess I can understand why it is as it is. 

As a general rule I'm not in favor of "zoos" because I have seen pens too small that caused obvious neurosis in its inhabitants. But if the animals have lots of room to roam then it's not so bad. At least the areas were nice and clean and the animals (with the exception of a few raggedy ostriches) looked good and healthy.

As a final statement I would not hesitate to bring visitors to our area there.

Wildlife Safari Visit

Just a few miles south of Roseburg is the little town of Winston, home of the Wildlife Safari. Basically its a drive through zoo.  We have never been there before so while the kids were visiting over Easter vacation week we decided to drive on down.

It's not real cheap (by my standards) with tickets at $17.99 for adults and $11.99 for kids. So that would have been $65.96 for all of us. However I found a little link at the bottom of their website for discount tickets. We ordered our tickets from there at a 15% discount so I only ended up paying $56.06. Better than full price!! I was a little leary about doing it that way but the tickets were available immediately and all I had to do was print them off and away we went.

What we were not expecting was the giant line of cars waiting to get in. But it was after all, a holiday week. We finally got near the beginning and saw an employee directing some cars to the right and some cars to the left. Turns out since we were "prepaid" we got to go to the left and drive right in; no more waiting for us!

At the entrance gate we were handed a map of the grounds and given a few simple rules. Stay in the car. Do not feed the animals (except at the specific designated feeding areas). And if the rhinoceros was near the road do not stop! I guess she can get a littly grumpy.

I had my telephoto lens on and with that and the ability to cut and crop I got a few decent pictures.

Of course these aren't really exotic but the wild turkeys were strutting their stuff.

Lioness.

Lion.

I've always loved hippos. Maybe because in German their name means Nile Horse.

Missing an antler/horn.

Along the way there was a big hold up in traffic. Some moron decided to ignore the rules and they were feeding an ostrich. Of course they stopped in the middle of the road so no one could go around. After they finally moved to the side the ostrich decided to try its luck on the next cars. Our windows were rolled up. NO BREAD FOR YOU!!

Giving us the stink eye.

The bears weren't very active.

My high school mascot, the bison! RAH RAH!

More pictures later!