Saturday afternoon/evening: I only visited Deer Park one time last year (2021), mostly due to the fact that it is a little bit "pricey" ... and I thought it certainly couldn't get any BETTER than it was last year; but I was WRONG!
First of all: This place is CLEAN, beautiful, FUN, genius (the tunneling is amazing), creative, and there is such a wide variety of animals to see and touch and feed. The staff are KIND and helpful. They are well informed about each animal and eagerly share interesting facts with guests.
With a $14 admission fee (up from $11 last year), and $4 for a cup of carrots to feed most of the animals, $$ can add up quickly. However, I can honestly say it is worth every single dollar spent. There are TWO great gift shops and I am glad to tell you that I did not purchase a single item! NOT ONE!!! It was difficult though.
I took a huge number of pictures with my camera that I will post later--but I did want to journal our time here on this blog so that I don't forget the details. I'll just post the pictures from my phone right now.
The first thing we noticed when we drove into the parking lot was that the "free" playground (with the giant train and fort that had tunnels connecting) was enclosed and now part of the paid park experience. PLUS, they added these giant blue umbrellas to provide a bit of much-needed shade. NOW, that "outside" playground has been incorporated into the main park. I like how they did it very much--quite seamless. If you had never been to Deer Park in the past, you would never realize what they did.
They also added a super cute ground hog area. I took tons of pictures (camera) of it and I will post those when I am able to.
NOTE (7/27/22): The pictures I am adding are from Emma's photography--she sent them to me since we now know that the pictures I took with my camera from Deer Track were not backed up and so they are forever gone. :( I am so glad Emma could send me these great pictures she took.
Most of the rest of these phone pictures were taken near the end of our stay--we spent a lot of time in the bunny house. This long-haired rabbit's name is SAM. You canNOT believe how soft her hair is!
We had the most fun with the pigs, however. Yes! THE PIGS. Three in particular were following us around in the pig area--they were NOT small pigs! The funniest one of them all was kind of a golden-haired fellow by the name of GEORGE (I'm NOT kidding!). Emma nick-named him "Fatty" because HE WAS! Plus, he hogged (ha!) all of the carrots we were trying to share with Penny and Belle (the other two pigs). There were baby pigs as well, but they were sleeping most of the time we were there. I can't wait until I am able to post the pig pictures.
7/2722 upload of Emma's pics:
The girls climbed around in and out of the tunnels and had a lot of fun. I remembered (!!) how difficult it is for an OLD lady to maneuver down those tunnels and wisely abstained this year. I also didn't climb the net to get to the tippy top of the apparatus--although I really wanted to--I love the view from up there.
(The following pics are from Emma) **:
There was also a rather young fawn in a large enclosure this year. Watching her RUN was SO beautiful. We were there at the right time and got to watch her inhale her bottle. **
We also enjoyed the baby goats. They will EAT ANYTHING. They kept climbing up on Kaity and trying to eat her hair!
**:
We also walked to the BEAR exhibit. They have two or three young bears (who were sleeping) and then a GI-NORMOUS brown bear out in a huge fenced-in area. "Pooh" and "Winnie" (the two cubs from last year) are now out where the Safari goes. We didn't do the Safari (way too much $$ for my modest budget). **
There were also ostriches this year! And EMU! What an amazing God we have Who designed all of these animals.
More pics that Emma sent me:
PS I had a bunch of nice pictures of Kaity and Emma together ... but I could not retrieve them since during our computer switcheroo, they had not been backed up to the hard drive.
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