Our day started in Marshfield, MO, hometown of Edwin Hubble, namesake of the Hubble telescope - this is us in front of 1/4 replica of the telescope. I have learned so much on this trip - bring on Rt. 66 trivia at Grumpy's!! We had a great breakfast at Freda's Cafe and then we headed off for something called "Exotic Animal Paradise".
We weren't really sure what to expect, basically the description said that you could drive your car through 9 1/2 miles of land (the land is actually over 240 acres - so the animals have plenty of room) and see exotic animals - we seriously did not know how awesome this would be. There are a bunch of pictures below - we took tons more - it was so much fun. Ryan was a bit concerned about animals scratching the car, so we bought an extra large bag of feed that the attendant told us we could throw to get animals away from the car.
This is the camel we encountered as soon as we went through the gates. We tried throwing feed to her, but all she wanted was to eat out our hands from inside the car.
She came around to my side and Ryan lured her so far in the car with feed she laying all the way across me and her lips were rubbing my face. I was completely hysterically laughing.
When we wanted to move on, we could not get her away from us, so we drove away down the hill and she RAN after us - full on galloped like a horse. Ryan was literally driving and watching a camel chasing us in the rear view mirror. She was no match for the Chevy though.
This is an emu - and yes, it's head is that big. We held food pellets in our fingers and the thing precision pecked them out of our hands. I got my fingers pinched at one point, but it was crazy - we could barely get away from this one either.
This was crazy - the zebra didn't quite eat out of our hands, but he was about 2 feet away from Ryan. So beautiful - he had stripes everywhere, even into the smallest part of his tail. And a super thin mane that stood straight up.
We then visited the donkeys, who were braying really loudly and shoving their heads in the car. Apparently, they have mated with the zebras and there are some zedonks running around the park.
This is an example of one of the animals we did NOT lure toward the car. Awesome though.
There were some buffalo on the trail that were huge and kind of freaking me out, but Ryan really wanted to try and feed one by hand, so he lured it up to the car. It reached in and tried to take the pellet with its foot long blue tongue. I really can't describe this tongue - it was giant and flailing all over the car and drooling all over me. If you remember Jabba the Hut licking his lips in Star Wars - that was the buffalo tongue - except blue! Seriously, this place was worth the trip all by itself.
Afterward we went to the little farm animal petting zoo, we loved the goats and the miniature horses and this awesome pig, who was friends with a tortoise.
OK, moving on (although with difficulty), we visited this little 30s gas station reproduction with the nicest guy working there. He gave us a ton of information on Route 66.
This is a manure spreader converted into a crop duster - called the "Crap Duster". Love the sense of humor on the road.
This was us stopping for ice cream at "Superman on 66", soon to change their name to "Supertam on 66" due to the fact that Warner Bros. called the owner and told him he cannot use the name Superman in his store name. I had the Superman special cone.
We both learned there is a Supercat named Streaky! Who knew?!? We miss our kitty!
1 comment:
That camel is so cute! Zebras are crazy. When I was in Africa the first time and went on safari, they were everywhere and they are so strange and beautiful. I'd love to see a zebradonk, for sure!
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