I have to clean my truck too.

Yep, I was also at the wild animal park with a couple of other bloggers on Tangent’s. Check out their stories here and here.

I had a lot of fun on my latest trip to the African Safari Park in Port Clinton. This year was a slightly different experience for me. Number 1 it was the first time I ever took my own vehicle into the park. Number 2 was that this year I had back window that could open all the way. My very first experience with this park was back in the 1970’s. They still had lions in an area you could drive through. Having lions right outside your vehicle is something else. I’m sure the insurance cost and the safety of the animals brought this practice to an end. As much as I like the big cats, I think this is a better park for not having them there.

Now on to what they did have. Lots of Elk. To have one of these large members of the deer family stick their head in your vehicle is really something. To have 4 of them at once, that is beyond belief. Of course they do want to be fed, and are looking, and smelling for handouts. One even took a whole bag of carrots, but we got them back, I don’t think she liked the bag.

Then there were some smaller deer and antelope roaming the area. They were a well behaved when compared to their larger brethren. They seemed a little bit shy this year, compared to last year’s visit. Maybe they were just well fed and had no need to come up to the cars and trucks.

On to the American Bison, and very large cattle. I had the “pleasure” of going face to face with an American Bison on the ride through the park. This does tend to make me a bit leery, since I know someone who has a bison ranch, and I’ve seen first hand what one of those animals can do to a truck when they want to. These bison seem very friendly, but they do have terrible breath. They really seemed to like walking with the vehicles as they drive through. We had one that was only interested in the carrots, and would not take the other dried pellets the park sells. The cattle were something else. I saw two types, both had very large horns, but one had very long hair. My youngest called him Ludo last year, because he reminded her of the Large creature from the movie Labyrinth. We did manage to save a carrot for him. The other two long horned cattle had horns about 4 to 5 feet long each and the base was at least 12 in circumference. Big horns. That did stop these fellows from sticking their head too far into the truck, but they had very long tongues to make up for that.

Then on the the area where the other animals were enclosed away from the vehicles. Among these were Giraffes, Zebras and a Giant Eland. Even they got close to the fences looking for handouts.

Everything about the early part of the day was great fun. Everybody got to get as much of the animal experience as they wanted, and I think we went away happy. A little damp, from drool, but happy.

And I got a photo of me with a rather large snake. Not that I really think these would make a good pet for me, but I am strangely drawn to these fascinating creatures.

I’m trying to find out the names of the large cattle, hopefully they are on the brochure. They don’t appear to be on the website