arbuckle wilderness

Last weekend, we wanted to get away for the day and do something different. So we decided to take Carter to Arbuckle Wilderness. I didn't even know it was still there after all these years! It was neat, but to be honest, Brandon and I were a little disappointed. The place seems a little run down from what we remember as kids. There was only maybe 6 or 7 other cars in the parking lot and we thought it would be packed on a Saturday. It had rained a lot the night before, so most of the walk through part of the park was closed too. Oh well - we did have fun with the animals though!

This is how we started out in the park, but we soon realized that wouldn't work if I was helping feed the animals and take pictures!

The first bunch of animals were some llamas and camels. This guy was running beside the car wanting that food!!

Then came these guys. Oy vey. Of course they stick their  heads in the car, which is kinda scary to me. But then one of them grabbed the cub from Carter, ate some and then slammed the cup in the car. Carter kinda had a melt down because it scared him and then he didn't want to feed any more of the camels because he thought they would do the same thing. Fine by me!

So then we switched to this. Carter was much happier helping Daddy drive anyway. lol

They  had these minature donkeys! They were so cute - about the size of dogs!!

I can't remember what these were called, but they were pretty. Something from Africa.

One of my complaints was the cups they give you to feed the animals. I think it was 3 cups for $5. Well, these long skinny cups are hard for the animals to get the food! They should have wider cups for them! Plus we could have bought maybe 4 or 5 more cups because we ran out really fast. They could have a place within the park to see the feed!

I loved getting to practice photography on the animals!

I was so excited when we got to the giraffes I just started snapping away. I didn't have the settings right on my camera so they don't look as good though. :-(

Nap time for these two.

I absolutely love old photographs too. When I saw this Buffalo, it reminded me of a special we watched on the History Channel "America: The Story of Us." (I know, we are old fogies, but we love the History Channel). It said there were billions of buffalo roaming the country before we got here! So that with that thought in mind, and a little magic from The Pioneer Woman's actions for Photoshop Elements and viola! The first one is Straight out of the Camera.

After we finished driving through, we went to the walk through park. You could feed the fish and turtles. I hope you can see them in these pictures, but there were about 100 turtles that swam up when we started feeding them! But, they were too slow! I can't imagine how many fish were under them, but they gobbled up the feed every time we through it!

See ya Arbuckle!!