Wednesday we got up early to heard to Wildlife World Zoo in Litchfield Park, Arizona. The drive is about an hour from Joe’s parents’ but wasn’t too bad thanks to the awesome HOV lanes – we flew past the traffic! I love the expressways in Arizona because they are all in fantastic shape thanks to the lack of snow and ice. Plus they are all absolutely free; no tolls whatsoever. Gotta like that!
We were meeting M, J, and O so we had time to stop at the nearby McDonald’s for a quick breakfast since we were due to arrive at the zoo ahead of them by at least twenty minutes. We arrived at the zoo about fifteen minutes after they opened and they were already there. Doh! Turns out their GPS overestimated how long it would take them to get there.
It was a rare cloudy/overcast day – our first one since arriving – which turned out to be perfect since it got into the mid 80’s throughout the day but without the sun beating down on us it felt very comfortable.
The zoo didn’t seem that large at first glance but it turns out they have a ton of animals. The highlights included the zoo show where they introduced some of the more intelligent animals such as Ollie the Otter and an African Grey Parrot. The baby animal nursery was awesome too – they had a white tiger cub, a leopard cub, and two lion cubs.
Included in the admission price was the chance to feed the lorikeets.
They only allow the feeding at certain times but we were able to attend the first feeding. Before going into the enclosure it was explained to us that the green bucket of apple pieces were to feed the birds and the red bucket was for any pieces eaten or that have fallen to the ground. We were also warned that anything that went into the birds would be coming back out within fifteen minutes and that we’d get a two minute warning so we could clear the enclosure in time. Feeding the birds was fun although a bit stressful when you have three of them digging their claws into your arm while picking apart a quartered apple in the palm of your hand.
I also got some great photos of the resident leopard which was exciting since most of the time they are sleeping.
Oh, and for 50 cents (per handful of food) you can feed the giraffes. You can’t get as close to them as at the Phoenix zoo, however.
I finally got a sharp photo of a meerkat too!
Around 2 pm we were super hungry so we decided to take a break and eat at the on-site restaurant, Dillions KC BBQ. I had the half chicken and Joe had the beef brisket, both of which were good. Their $2 onion rings were awesome as well.
After lunch M and crew decided to leave while Joe and I stuck around to look at the aquarium portion of the zoo which was the only section we hadn’t seen yet. I toured the majority of it alone, however, since Joe had a phone interview (his second of the week; he had one on Monday for a different company while we were at the Botanical Garden).
We left the zoo around 4 pm and made a pit stop at Walmart for a couple of things.
Later that evening everyone met up at Joe’s parents, including M and crew, who bought a Nothing Bundt Cake for Joe’s mom’s birthday. M had asked for lemon but apparently someone screwed up because we ended up with white chocolate raspberry. Luckily it was delicious anyway!