Honestly, if I’m going to spend two hours in the car driving somewhere, I want that destination to be a darn-tootin’ good one. I don’t know if the end of today’s two hour trek delivered. I think Bill and Kaitlyn thought it did; which means I’m out voted anyway. Oh, where’d we go? A zoo.
This is not just any zoo. We’ve heard people rave about it (maybe that’s why I was disappointed… I had high expectations). You don’t just walk around and look at animals like every other zoo. You drive through part and the animals can walk right up to your car. Ok bring it on.
We started at the side you drive through. You start by getting out of your car to see elephants. Oh, and, of course, stop at the gift shop (we skipped that part) Not off to a stunning start. When you finally get to the part where the animals can wander along the road, the animals that get in the way are ostriches. It’s actually kinda neat. They do come right up to the car. And they are pretty big — especially compared to the little European cars! The car in front of us looked like a mini Mini, and there were three guys dressed like Deter from SNL stuffed inside.
Past the ostrich area, you drive through some gates with signs that tell you to roll up your windows and under no circumstances get out of your car (like if it breaks down). They meant it; they put the signs up in French and English. Normally, the French don’t seem to care if non-French speakers understand the dangers of a situation. Pretty soon, we understood why this warranted such a stern warning. Big black bears were lying all over the road or wandering right by the cars. The best part was that the Deter trio in the wind-up car rolled down their windows to get better pictures.
Honestly, I thought we’d drive by lions and tigers. No. The bears were the most ferocious creatures in the safari. Now, I’m not slighting the ferocity of a bear (if any bears happen to be reading this). It’s simply what I’d imagined. Turns out the lions and tiger are in the normal part of the zoo.
The normal part of the zoo was kind of a disappointment. I didn’t think it was as nice a zoo as the one in North Carolina. The exhibits seemed a little sad and so did the animals. To me. But the saddest part was that all the food vendors were closed. We don’t know if that is because it was March or because it was Sunday, but we do know it put a real hurt on our plan of grabbing lunch at the zoo. We found some vending machines and tried to make lunch out of two bags of funky-tasting potato chips and a giant Twix cookie. Then Bill noticed the gift shop had some pre-made sandwiches. We all munched on a ham sandwich from there.
As for the two-hour ride home, I fell asleep. After we stopped at a gas station so I could use the bathroom. I passed on the hole in the ground bathroom at the zoo. That may do fine for the inhabitants, but not for this visitor.