4 Apr 2021
Happy birthday to me! Today, we drove up to Banning Mills to go ziplining!
All our gear, lined up:
A plank bridge took us to the first set of lines:
The guides carried a camera and occasionally took a few pictures:
Matt, hamming it up 🙂
I found this little guy sunning himself on one of the steps!
I got a little too close and he jumped onto me! I made a friend!
Tree huggers!
The second set of lines included a ropes course!
A tightrope and a plank bridge:
That bridge narrowed in the middle and I totally missed a step- ended up with a nice bruise 🙁
Water break between the 2nd and 3rd sets:
So there’s not much for scale in this picture, but that was the chubbiest bumblebee I’d ever seen!
Matt, getting ready to ride a long line:
Going…
going…
gone!
Me, on the long line:
Us on a bridge:
Us and one of our guides, Levi, before our last line:
Beautiful views on our last line:
Hiking back to the beginning:
Our second stop was the Wild Animal Safari, a drive-thru animal park!
You can either take your own car, rent one of theirs:
or ride the bus- we opted to take the bus as we didn’t want to risk wrecking our rental car and even if we rented a car, one of us would still be slightly distracted by the driving. While we waited for the next bus (they were running about every 30 mins when we visited), I spotted this cute little skink!
In we go!
Giraffe! He came right up to our bus window to be fed 🙂
Pro tip: sit on the driver’s side of the bus- while the animals can free-range, the loop you drive goes counter-clockwise so the majority of the enclosure will be on that side.
Free-range emus:
And this is why you might want to use their vehicles:
Water buffaloes, coming right up to the cars for snacks!
Then there’s this guy, licking his nostril:
Little spotted deer!
This guy looks like he has angry eyebrows!
Look at this guy’s magnificent antlers!
Zebras!
Figures that the zebra would be pooping in the clearest shot I was able to get of him:
A caged lion:
So right around this point, our bus died. Wouldn’t start, wouldn’t turn over. Dead. So our driver radioed for assistance and they brought us a new bus, which they somehow backed through the park and down a hill- it was pretty impressive!
We later learned that someone put regular gas into the diesel bus. Oops.
Once we were back up and running again, I spotted this antelope with awesome antlers!
More white caribou:
Horned sheep:
Most of them looked kinda raggedy, like they were molting:
A potbellied pig!
Moose on a hill!
Another spotted deer with antlers!
He knew where the snacks were 🙂
Then traffic stopped for this buffalo herd:
The lake sure was pretty!
Spotted cow:
Even bigger horns!
Shaggy cow:
snacking:
Buffalo!
A pale buffalo:
The golden buffalo!
An angry ostrich!
Oh, deer!
A little lamb:
More of those scowling, spotted deer:
There was also a walk-thru area, full of free-range peacocks!
Isn’t he pretty!?
He was dancing enthusiastically for this peahen, but she was not interested:
Liger:
Siberian tiger:
A wolf!
a proper wolf!
This monkey creeped me out:
HELP! I’ve been constricted by a boa!
Our hotel for the night was tucked up in the mountains:
There was a little chapel on site- weddings up here would be gorgeous!
We were both famished but it was Sunday and Easter, so nothing was open and we got in maybe 10 minutes after the front desk closed (the doors were locked but I could still see people inside, ignoring my knocks), so we grabbed some sodas from the vending machine, made some PB&J sandwiches, popped some popcorn (that we got from our stay at Glen-Ella) and watched some Netflix over sketchy internet.
All in all, a great birthday 🙂