Life as a Yowler

In regular fashion yesterday, I received a phone call from my husband at 1:30 saying “on my way home from my training. Be ready to go in an hour. I have a big surprise for the kids.” Turns out he saw an advertisement for a drive through safari. He researched it and realized we had just enough time to get there before 5pm(which is the last time they let anyone in to drive through). Plus I wrote before about how Caed has been wanting to go to the jungle. Perfect!

The people who ran the safari were so nice and welcoming. They let Caed in for free. They were so excited he wanted to come there for a late birthday celebration. After driving through, all the kids said this is the highlight of their trip so far.

We couldn’t believe how many animals we saw. We also couldn’t believe how interactive they were. Now I can’t lie and say I was brave when the animals stuck their heads all the way in our windows. Brandon ended up locking my window so I couldn’t roll it up. He died laughing watching me freak out. He is cute isn’t he? At one point in time, a zebra came and stuck his entire head in my window. I screamed and literally ended up in Brandon’s lap clutching on to him. He said “honey, this is the most action I’ve had in weeks.”

We got 10 bags of food total, to feed the animals. We bought 6 and they gave us 4 for free. They said we were the last car driving through for the day, so they had extra food for us. It was so fun. We took our time, since we had no one behind us to worry about.

Most of the animals came right up to us and wanted food. They would eat it right out of our hands, but we kept telling the kids to throw it in the ground so they wouldn’t get bit.

There were around 20 species of deer.

I couldn’t believe how bold the zebras were. All of them wanted to climb in our van.

The bison came right up to us. Joah yelled, “dad, I can’t believe it! I just touched a bison!”

Both Brandon and I had a yak come right up to our window and try to lick us to death. I’m not kidding. Those things have the longest tongues. They were licking and licking, looking for food and refusing to give up until they got some. Once again, I ended up in Brandon’s lap and I yelled for people to start feeding him to get it away from me. 🤣 I give you exhibit A…..

This was Caed’s face during the yak attack.

Joah, being the out of the box kind of kid that he is, loves pigs more than any other animal. There just happened to be javelenas at this safari. He was SO excited to see them. There was even a little baby one that was so adorable.

All is us have absolutely loved our stay in Texas. Texas is one of our top 3 favorite states for sure. It’s such a huge state with so much variety. There are about the most hick people you will ever see, along with some of the most classy. We love variety. We love activity. We love all the unique things there are to do there. We love the weather. It’s hot but not humid. Now we move on to Louisiana. Looking forward to making more memories!