Safari West- Day 5

October 20, 2012 was our fifth day of the honeymoon and we woke up in the most unusual place...a tent high above the African plains...in California!  Yeah, figure that one out!

Most amazing sight when we woke up!

It was so so so cold when we woke up and I did not want to leave our warm bed or the electric blanket!  Especially not to go into the freezing cold bathroom for any reason!  Kevin went out to film the foggy/misty morning and the animals waking up.

We finally got up and threw on the warmest clothes we could find to walk down to breakfast.  We weren't at breakfast long, just enough to chow down on a bagel and get some coffee before heading back to our tent.  We showered and got ready for the day and packed up all of our stuff.  Then we walked down to the registration area to check out and had a nice guy drive his open-air jeep back up to our tent to take all of our bags to our car.  Then, we spent about an hour walking around the caged animals, filming them and exploring on our own.

Dwarf Antelope

Cheetahs

Monkeys

Watch me get in trouble for trying to feed the giraffes!  Oops!

Then it was time for our official tour!  Leslie was our guide and she had been at Safari West for 15-18 years.  So, her knowledge of the animals was outstanding!  We started with a tour of the caged animals and actually got to enter some of the cages for a closer look at birds and smaller animals!  It was really cool!  We had seen all of them on our own wanderings earlier that morning, but to hear about them made it meaningful!  I'm really glad we did the walking part first, because it lasted about an hour to an hour and a half and we would have been ready to go, if we had done it after the real safari.  But, our "official" safari was next and we loaded up on the old safari vehicle...used in WWII and headed out.  Kevin and I got to sit up top for the first part of the trip and then we switched somewhere in the middle to let others ride.



Up top!



Zebras

It's a fight!!!

Wildebeest!

Goldie was less than 2 feet from my face!  I was seriously scared!

The safari was amazing!  To be just a few feet from these animals was unbelievable!  Better than a zoo!

We reluctantly left Safari West and drove over to Rohnert Park, CA for lunch at the Olive Garden.  We were starved, so it was PERFECT!  Then we checked into the Hampton Inn in Rohnert Park for a relaxing afternoon/evening.  Rohnert Park was seriously just a stop before our next big stop...it was cheaper, so we decided on a night there to save a little money.  We rested and caught up on our e-mail and watched movies.  On towards evening, we finally got up and went out for some exciting shopping!  We hit up the Target for some snacks, chocolate, a bathing suit and then popped over to Burlington Coat Factory for a bathing suit for Kevin and a top for me (yeah, we forgot to pack ours and remembered we'd have an awesome pool at our next stop).  The cashier at the Target wondered why we were so happy and taking pictures in the Target and we told her we were on our honeymoon.  Her only response was, "why in hell are you here?  This place is a dump."  She said it, not us, but it made us laugh so hard!  Who else has visited Rohnert Park for any reason, much less for their honeymoon?  HA!

We stopped at a Thai restaurant to get take-out for Kevin and I reheated my leftover Olive Garden and we watched tv while we had our dinner.  The staff at Hampton Inn had left us an awesome bottle of wine, so we popped that open and enjoyed that.  Kevin feel asleep early and I spent more time on the computer and read a little before it was lights out for me!