Pictures- Wild Animal Park

After a late night Saturday night --some friends came over after the Sweet & Tender Hooligans show--it was nice to sleep in and chill out before my family picked me up and we headed to the Wild Animal Park. Every year, they do a Park at Dark Holiday Lights thing, and this was the last day to catch it in 2007. Of course, my camera was mainly focused on my niece, Johanna.





The entrance to the lot was packed, perhaps poor planning on our part, but it was fun and a nice way to spend the late afternoon. It was funny how everywhere you walked you heard people talking about the recent tiger attack in SF. When we realized the wait for the tour into "The Heart of Africa" was nearly two hours, we decided we would see what we could by foot. As far as the animals go, it was only exciting to see the lions enclosure, where one lion really did just look like the kind of the jungle.



As we were about to leave his area, the crowd kinda roared. The lion was stretched on his perch, then quickly jumped down and ran to where the people were looking through the glass and he began to roar. It was so loud, we thought it was one of the prerecorded boxes making the sound, but it was the lion growling, and his roar caused all of the other lions, who were in the adjacent building put away for the night, to roar.

Once the sun dropped, it became harder to see much of the animals, but we still wandered around, looking at the lights, watching some kids use sleds on an artificial snow hill, some other kids sing some Christmas songs on a karaoke machine, and various other activities in the village area of the park before we ran out of things to do and we headed back south.



It was a beautiful night in Escondido, and I made my mom stop at a little taco shop to get some of the awesome Mexican food that Escondido is known before we said our goodbyes. Any San Diegan who doesn't have a Zoological Society membership is really missing out on one of the best things San Diego has to offer.