Butterfly Jungle at the Safari Park

We went to the Safari Park Thursday morning for a couple hours.  Its the time of year for the big butterfly exhibit, so we didn't want to miss it.  The girls and I arrived right when they opened and were able to go right into the Butterfly Jungle.  It was beautiful!

The girls didn't really want to pose for any pictures, and didn't want any butterflies to land on them for some reason.  I was able to get this one shot of them checking out this orange butterfly on the sidewalk.  One butterfly landed on my bag, but it was behind me where I couldn't get a picture.  Audrey was quick to scare one off of her bright, flowery shirt, and one nearly landed on Eliza's dragonfly hairclip, but Eliza moved.  Oh well - not meant to be I guess.

At least I got some nice pictures of the butterflies!

Eliza saying hi to Kiburi the baby cheetah when we first arrived.  He was so excited to see us!  He ran right over to check us out and jump around for us.

Eliza was excited about the lily pads near the lagoon.

Happy to pose for a picture without the chance of butterflies landing on her.

Audrey in the petting zoo with this huge deer.

Eliza loved this gorilla statue.  Audrey was excited when she saw it, but then got the wood chips in her shoe and was not happy.

We walked up to Condor Ridge, which we had missed on our last trip.

Finally!  Two smiling faces.

One of the huge California Condors.

We were lucky to see the porcupines at feeding time.  They were nowhere in sight on the way up the trail, but came right out to eat as we were walking back down.

In the Discovery Outpost we got to meet Stanley.  He was a cute little tenrec.

Eliza enjoyed petting him, and asked the keeper if he rolled into a ball.  He doesn't, but it was such a great question!

An interesting fact about Stanley - he smelled like corn tortillas!  No joke.

Audrey had no interest in Stanley, but loved these little rubber bugs.  She lined them all up and was so proud of herself.

Then she moved on to coloring a picture of a bumble bee.

Eliza tried on these huge butterfly wings.

Both Eliza and Audrey played with the bug magnets for a while.  There were lots of different bug parts that you could put together to make a whole bug.  Such fun!

On the way towards the exit, we stopped to see one of the keepers talking about this pretty cat-like animal.  It is called a fossa.  We were excited to see him so close, and learn about yet another animal we'd never heard of before - 2 in one day is pretty impressive if you ask me.