Busch Gardens

Eli loves animals so Busch Gardens was AMAZING. Isadora was tired, tired of being at hot amusement parks so my mom stayed home with her while we took Eli to Busch Gardens. HE LOVED IT almost as much as I did! :-) WARNING: There are a lot of photos. This blog is not for the faint of heart. I took 750+ photos of our trip, so I really did pare this down a lot!

Here's a cool shot I took from the skybox. It's this great box that really books it over the whole safari zone and you can see all the animals from above. It goes so fast, there is a really nice breeze. NO, it's not running in fear. It's being chased by another gazelle, or whatever this thing is... I am not quite sure!


My favorite part of the whole day was how we got within LITERALLY an inch of the lions! The male lion was REALLY friendly and kept rubbing his head on the glass!

Check this out! Eli had NO fear at all.

Apparently they rotate the prides (they have five) so the lions are eager to be in the little display area and get some attention. BEST ZOO EVER!

They had the setup focused on two safari jeeps they built into the display. Eli loved those jeeps!

Emma and Eli with Aslan! ha.

The ring tailed lemurs were NEAT! So playful and fun.

Eli thought they were a crackup and he totally knew they were from Madagascar. He did his "I like to move it move it" dance.

He really liked this bird with a "hat".

Okay this is kind of sad. I like posing with statues, so I saw this one and told Whit to put Eli on. Right now, his word for "hot" and "seat" sound the same. "Ott" and "eet" are about how they come out. We totally thought he was saying Seat or Sit, and it turns out he was saying "HOT" because the back of the gorilla where we put him was hot. Whoops.

This ape TOTALLY ate a kiwi right in front of us--turns out Apes peel them, too! Very carefully, I might add.

Another statue shot.

I think this photo should go on a commercial for deoderant. Can you tell which sleeping gorilla is sure? Which one is un-sure!? Haha.

Eli rests his head on Dad's head when he gets tired. It's cute! We're in line here for the sky box.

Whit decided to wake him up by playing "Where's Eli?" He turns his head to whichever side Eli's head isn't on. To get his attention Eli grabs his nose. This is a game I never play for obvious reasons!

Eli loves it though--see?

Here's my handsome hubby in the sky box.

And here are the sisters.

Eli liked the tigers, especially the white ones.

I know no one really wants to see shots of just animals, but I loved this one. I kind of think I could put it on a postcard! haha.

This is what our life would look like if Eli had been a twin. AHHHHHH!

That lion is sleeping on the box people can peek their heads up in. I am telling you, you can get closer to the animals at Busch Gardens than anywhere else on Earth. Have I made you want to go yet!?

Grrrr.

We will DEFINITELY go again the next time we go to Florida!