Pennsylvania Vacation - Day 1

We departed our house at the early hour of 2:25am on route to Washington, Pennsylvania to visit Mike's sister Teri and her husband Mike as well as their kids. And yes both boys were wide awake and excited to go!

After approximately nine hours of travel, which included a stop for breakfast (donuts at a rest stop), a stop for lunch (sandwiches, chips, fruit, and cookies at a rest stop), several stops pf just getting out and running around at the rest stop, we made it to Cumberland, Ohio and the Wilds!

If you are every passing anywhere near the Wilds, we HIGHLY recommend stopping - it was amazing! And if you're a member at any zoo in the United States, you'll get half off the Safari Transport tour.

We boarded our air conditioned tour bus with Adam the tour guide (GREAT!) and headed out! Here is a sampling of what we saw - pictures taken from right out the window of our tour bus.

Persian Onagers from Iran:
A hippo staying cool in the water:

One of our stops allowed us to get off and walk down to the lake where we looked at and feed the giant cat fish:

Przewalski Wild Horses originally from most of Europe and parts of Asia:

Female Bantengs from the mainland of southeastern Asia and Indonesia:

Another of our stops was at the cheetah area, where there were two separate areas for these amazing animals:

Aren't they beautiful!And look at the cute cheetah cubs! This was one of John's favorite spots:

Grevy's Zebras from northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia (Ethiopia yeah!) Our tour guide Adam was really excited as he said this was as close as he had ever seen them get to a tour bus:

It was so cool to see this one get down and roll in the dust!We saw a few variety of deer and I'm pretty sure this is the Eld's deer - I do know this one was eating and Adam made a noise out the window which made the deer stop eating and look up and around. the boys asked him to do it again and then promptly imitated him which also caused the deer to look our way and cracked up everyone on the tour !

Watching out the window:

This was definitely my and Ryan's favorite part of the tour - the giraffes were so close and it was so amazing to just see them walk right past where we were parked and look our way!

White rhinos from southern Africa:

These wacky looking animals are Sichuan Takins from western China:

What an amazing adventure and incredible display of God's creations! We loved this stop!!

We left the Wilds about 5pm and headed off for our last two hours. With a stop at McDonalds for dinner, we arrived at Mike and Teri's about 8pm! A great first day!!