Giraffe Ranch

Beyond excited to share this truly unique experience from my sisters weekend in Florida. Giraffe Ranch is home to many of the animals that you would only expect to find at a traditional zoo, but its run like a true ranch that allows you to interact directly with the animals.

 Short of being a zoo keeper or a vet, you would never have the chance to engage so directly with these types of animals. It was seriously one of the best things I've ever done--even if it has ruined traditional zoos for me for life. 
Follow along on our southern safari!

There were so many options for us in terms of experiences that we couldn't pick just one and ended up doing a few. Here are the 3 we chose: 

1.) a segway tour of the ranch. Neither Jada or I had ever ridden segways, they are even more fun than they look. Though I totally crashed mine into a ditch!

2.) We did a traditional ride in the safari vehicle-that was definitely interesting

3.) We had the opportunity to feed both giraffes (my favorite animals) and lemurs

 I honestly would not have thought to feed lemurs, it was Jada's idea. But they were the cutest and the highlight of the day! 

These iPhone photos don't do the experience justice, but I forgot my camera battery. Also, it's kind of difficult to capture photos in one hand and feed these cuties in the other. Thankfully, I wore my GoPro for most of the experience so there is a fun video of us feeding the lemurs and tiny Muntjac deer in my instastories

 After lemur feeding, we hopped onto our segways and rode all through the Ranch! It was the craziest most surreal experience to be INSIDE the animal enclosures zooming around on a Segway.

Balancing on Top of Ostrich Eggs! 

Don't worry, we can't break them-mother nature has created these to endure. Ostriches aren't the smartest and accidentally step on there own eggs all the time. 

We couldn't believe it either when we were told is is ok to balance on them, but ostriches weigh 400 pounds-so these eggs can handle us balancing on them no problem.

White Rhino that came running towards us, was too happy to see us and be fed bananas

Making Friends!

finally, our last adventure of the day-the safari vehicle 

this massive camel reminded me of my pup...the moment you stopped scratching him, he nudged you to keep going 

Oh, just a little camel spit all over my jacket! 

No problem, saliva is an occupational hazard when you're going to school to be a dentist, so this didn't bother me one bit. 

Time to feed the giraffes!

I'm seriously in heaven here because giraffes are my absolute favorite animals. The zoo keeper asked me if I worked with animals because I answered every single question about them and identified every single skeletal bone during the educational portion. And I had to say no, I don't work with animals, I'm just a little bit obsessed with giraffes is all! 

As a true lover of animals, this really was one of the best experiences I've ever had. It was incredible to see so many of these endangered animals being protected and nurtured. And unlike traditional zoos, they aren't overexposed and have the chance to live more as they would in the wild than in captivity. I'm still so obsessed with this and cannot believe that it really happened. It was a once in a lifetime experience in itself, but was made even better by the fact that I had the opportunity to share this with my little sister. This made for the perfect end to the best sisters weekend. 

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