The Gentry Zoo

Last Saturday, while my mom was in town, we went to The Wild Wilderness Drive-Through Safari in Gentry, Arkansas. We had heard some good things about it and it was on our short list of "Things to do" before we leave. It was a 45 minute drive to the park and then you drive through the zoo. There were several animals roaming free (buffalo, zebra, deer, ostriches, etc.) and a few in cages along the road (tigers, monkeys, bears, wolves, etc.) The boys LOVED it. We let everyone get out of their seat belts and Brady even came in the front seat with Zach and I. 

Here is Ryan pointing to a camel. You are supposed to keep your windows up during the tour but we could see the camel walking toward us and making a noise so we put the windows down so we could hear. Brady thought it was awesome until the camel kept getting closer. Then he backed away from the window, whining and saying, "Scared, scared." over and over. 

 The animals were totally unfazed by the cars driving through. It was really amazing to see these huge animals right outside your car window. It took us about an hour to go through the whole loop and we were entertained the whole time. There was so much to look at!

 This emu greeted us first thing as we drove into the park. I was happy I had my window up. It reminded me of the raptors in Jurassic Park. Creepy.

 Just a giant African animal of some sort right out Zach's window. No big deal.

 They had lots and lots of buffalo. Those things are huge! They even had some white ones which I thought was cool.

 Zach would put his window down to try to lure the buffalo closer. This one fell for it, but he got the last laugh- to this day we have buffalo snot all over our driver side door.

 Two words. Baby. Zebra.

Oh my goodness. I had not seen cute before this day. It was adorable. It had a very attentive mother though, so this was the best picture we could get. It was seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen in the whole wide world. I want one.

 This water buffalo does not look amused with Zach's window antics.

 Brady got a thrill driving the truck with Zach. We topped out at probably 7 miles an hour while driving the loop. There were so many animals to see! Brady and Ryan thought it was awesome to be out of their car seats in a moving car.

After the drive through portion of the zoo they had a petting zoo with goats, peacocks (good luck petting one of those!), pigs, llamas and kangaroos. They even had a baby spider monkey that people could hold (awwww!).

 I put Brady up on this rock at first since even the smallest goat was as tall as he was. About a minute later a black goat (pictured below) jumped up on the rock and tried to butt Brady off with his horns! Brady was not amused.

 You could purchase feed at the concession stand at the zoo. We opened the bag and there was one scoop of grain and about five pieces of bread. The goats were no dummies. They refused the bread and only went for the good stuff. We ended up feeding most of our bread to the peacocks.

 Once Brady got the hang of it he was in heaven. He loves animals so much. It is really fun to watch how entertained he is watching animals and it is even better if he can touch them!

 Like I mentioned in my last post, the petting portion of our trip was HOT! Lucky for Brady he has an awesome Grandma who will spring for $1 Capri Suns. It made his day.

After all the excitement of the animals and the hot afternoon sun, coupled with the fact that it was nap time, Brady was wiped by the time we drove out to go home. Our plan was to stop for lunch on the way home but Brady was asleep within the first five minutes and stayed asleep for the next three hours! What a fun day!