where the wild things are ...

At Lion Country Safari - we've been at the Lion Country Safari KOA in Loxahatchee for the past five weeks and hearing the lions roaring and roaring at all hours of the day and night - NOT a complaint, it's been really "neat" and fun. It's $26. to go through the safari which pretty much irked the hell out of me that after spending copious hundreds of dollars to be at the campground they don't throw you a couple passes to the safari. Oh well, too bad, too sad .... Rick wanted to go, so we got the $6. coupon off line and off we went the other day. It was SO much fun and so darned interesting - well worth the $$$

I've loaded 40 pictures to put on blog posts so this theme may go on for several posts - which I guess means weeks from now you'll still be reading about t he Safari!!! Anyway, I'm not sure the best way to do these posts about the safari so I think I'll just identify the animal in the photo and go that way with it!

And we're offfffffff for the tour .......

These handsome fellas are Gemsboks ... they are from southwest Africa and have adapted to go long periods of time with little or no water (not a problem here these last two days as we've had major rain that apparently is in New England now)

Obviously, above and below are elephants _ always make me think of my father. I think I posted a photo of Dad riding an elephant in one of the blog posts I did from Sioux Falls when we were there in the summer of 2008 and the circus was in town. Lion Country Safari has three elephants - we only saw these two. Hmmmm how could an elephant hide?? No clue!

Below is a group of Wildebeests who are from the open grasslands of eastern to southern Africa. Information overload on them is .... gigantic herds of millions of them migrate biannually to find food and water. Calves are able to run with their mothers shortly after birth.

Below, I believe are waterbuck - from Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Males have horns, females don't. These guys elude predators by submerging in water up to their nostrils!

Now a herd of Impala (NO not the kind Chevy made/makes). They are also from southern Africa to the northern limits of east Africa. They weigh between 100 and 145 pounds. Again, males have horns, females don't.

Zebra and white rhinoceros. I know, I know they don't look white - what can I say, I didn't name them, I didn't color them - I just tell it like it's explained to me!

When I was young, about a million and a half years ago, I had a "little golden book" titled "The Saggy Baggy Elephant" .... perhaps a cousin to the saggy baggy rhinoceros! This guy was about seven feet from us when I took this photo - man he has more rolls than a bakery (as my friend Candy would say) and I think he has more rolls than I do these days!

The photo below has the newest addition to the rhinoceros population at Lion Country Safari. The cutie in the middle is "Jazi", born December 9, 2008. What a cute baby huh.

Now, some stats on rhinos - they range from the plains and bushveldt of southern Africa and weigh up to 2.5 tons (WOW). Their life expectancy is 40 years and their eyesight is poor but they have excellent senses of hearing and smell. Unlike their black rhino relatives the whites are reasonably docile. I wonder what reasonably docile means when you're talking two and a half tons!

Isn't this zebra just gorgeous - I swear a person could be hypnotized if you stared at those stripes long enough! Zebra facts - these are called "Grant's Zebras" and they hale from the East African plains. They aren't as fast as a race horse, but do have more stamina. The zebras stripes are like our fingerprints - they are unique to each animal.

Finally for this post is the giraffe. Unfortunately, I ran out of memory on my card in the camera by this point and this photo was taken with my phone - kind of dark. A shame because they really are quite beautiful - also a shame that you can not get out of your car when you ride through the safari. Trust me when I tell you it is difficult to take a photo of a creature that is 17 feet tall! Especially when you are using a phone.

Stay tuned for the next safari post. I'm going to try to load more photos now, but we are on on the campgrounds wifi and it is slow and limited time and bandwidth (we blew the time limit on our own last night - something we've only done a couple time in these last couple years - OOPS)

We are leaving here tomorrow and headed to Mims (just outside Titusville/Kennedy Space Center) for at least two nights then on to Jacksonville for several weeks. We will likely extend our Mims stay - depending on how we like the campground - to four or five nights but we shall see.