Lazy 5 Ranch

So today, with both of us finished with all of our schoolwork and studying, we decided to take an adventure...and an adventure it was!

I'll start at the beginning. A couple of years ago, I heard about this book on our local Christian radio station, WBFJ:

I know we're not kids, and we weren't parents yet - but we're all about exploring fun places in North Carolina (there are books like these for lots of other states, by the way). We try out things in this book every so often. We love little day tripping adventures. I had been itching to try out the Lazy 5 Ranch in Mooresville. I heard that it was a very cool park. They have all kinds of exotic animals that you can see up close and feed.

Well people, this is NOT your average petting zoo! You enter the ranch, buy your bucket(s) of feed and begin driving around on the trail. We opted to take our own car (with air conditioning) instead of the wagon ride. As soon as you hit the trail, you encounter all kinds of exotic animals. Never in my life have I been so close to a zebra, a buffalo, or any of these other exotic animals. The animals are obviously well rehearsed in their job to eat the feed and try all kinds of tricks to get more. They put their heads right IN your car searching for the food!

For some reason the Emu's scared the daylights out of me. This was absolutely the first animal that we encountered and when it sauntered up to our car and stuck it's head in the window to munch on the bucket of feed that I had in my lap, I started screaming, "Don't peck me! Don't peck me!" Sean was laughing hysterically by this point. The tide turned soon though when the next animal that we encountered (a gazelle maybe!?) grabbed his entire plastic bucket with its teeth trying to get the whole bucket of food for itself. It was my turn to laugh as I watched Sean wrestle his bucket away.

We absolutely had a delightful time! They also have a petting zoo and Noah's Ark playground which will be tons more fun when Cooper gets older. He slept through the entire trail but woke up in time to look around the petting zoo. The pictures that you see of animals behind cages are in the petting zoo - the animals on the actual ranch seriously have free reign of the land that they are on. They mix and mingle together in and out of the traffic. It is definitely worth seeing!