Day 3, Part 1: Virginia Safari Park

Friday night some rain pushed into the area, and Saturday morning there was still some drizzle and light rain. That really, really stunk because Saturday was our main day of lots of outdoor activities! Everything we were doing that day was in Natural Bridge, VA, so I decided to just swap and put the Safari Park first on our to-dos and the outdoor walking/hike/caves second since it seemed like the rain was not going to last for too long.

Once again it took us a solid two hours to gather ourselves together for the day! This hotel did have a nice breakfast, so it was great to get some warm waffles before we left. And once again we utilized "the babysitter" and Dinosaur World to buy us some getting ready time.
Lilli fell asleep in the car ride over, which was fine because this park was a drive yourself through Safari park, and being turned around in her car seat really wasn't going to afford her much of a view of everything going on around her. She woke up about halfway into the experience, and I'm sure found it quite odd for emus and ostrich faces to be appearing in her window!

Once again the animals just WAIT for your car to enter so they can beg for food!
I started out with my window down, but quickly learned to leave it up at all times unless I wanted to feed someone! These animals had no fear - they'd just stand in front of the car and Brent would have to nudge them to get them to move, and even had to honk a few times.
I felt like I was back at home, except annoying tourists who pay no attention to lights and crosswalk signals had been replaced with exotic, hungry animals...
The big giant cattle with horns were in the "off limits for feeding" list provided when you drive through the ticket booth, but they were so cool to see!
Apparently zebras are pretty mean, they were also in the do not feed list, but they kept walking up to our car so we felt bad denying them!
Llamas have ZERO fear of traffic or you rolling up your window on them.
We saw quite a few people enjoying the park in this fashion....
The drive through the park was really pretty long, and we ran out of food extremely early. Next time I would def get a few buckets of food! After we finished the drive we parked and went into their petting zoo. There was still a light drizzle so Lilli got to sport her rain hat for a few minutes. So fashionable!
Photo opp!
Lilli loooves the llamas..
This one was so cute and fluffy! I bought her a little stuffed llama in the gift shop to remember all our animal adventures from this trip. If you can get past the hat you can see she's squealing in joy at the llama!
She wore her giraffe onesie on this day (that Brent painted for her!) specifically because you can feed and pet the giraffes. After battling Brent for the fifty cents I needed to make this dream a reality the dumb things never would come over to us. So Lilli would not pose for a picture with them....
Making funny faces with Dad.... Of course Brent had to take her over to his favorite animals, the goats...
She looooved the pigs. They were just her size...
$2.75? I'd only pay $2.50 for that big one with the pink shirt on...After a bottle in the parking lot for Lilli we headed over for the remaining Natural Bridge attractions - the actual bridge, caves and other tourist activities!