This past weekend, we visited a fantastic little place called Lazy 5 Ranch near KC’s parents house in North Carolina. It is similar to Safari Park in Natural Bridge, VA for all of you who live in our area of the state. Basically, it is 125ish acres of natural habitats for animals from all over the world; you can drive through in your own car or take a horse drawn wagon ride, guided by Donnie, the resident ranch expert complete with Wranglers, fu manchu, cowboy hat, and Willie Nelson tribute ponytail. Throughout the ride, we stopped to feed and pet the animals (some animals were a bit too rowdy or scary to stop for, but most were approachable). It was a dream come true for Tate. He adores animals and got over any fears of having them eat out of his hand in about 0.5 seconds. He was very disappointed that he could not get out of the wagon and roam around in the wild, but he was captivated enough by what he could do, so he was a happy boy! His favorite part was feeding the giraffes; he fed them out of his bucket and also hand-fed them leaves. Their long tongues really made him laugh! Max even got to feed the giraffes, with a little help from Nana. Given the season, many babies had just been born over the past few months (some as young as one week old), and that was such a spectacular sight. In fact, it was all so awesome that we happily endured the scorching 98 degree temperature and raging sun 
Here are some photos of our time and some of the beautiful animals we saw.
It was a very special afternoon, with a thoroughly thrilled little boy. And thankfully, we won’t be featured on the next episode of When Animals Attack.
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