I'm still rather shocked by this fact but my little girl is six years old! In fact, she turned six almost two weeks ago! Why do I know that she turned six almost two weeks ago? Well, number one, I have a rudimentary understanding of when her birthday falls. Number two and more importantly, we went away on a short, little family vacation to celebrate the momentous occasion! Where did we go, you may ask? One word, Wichita.
Now, I know on the surface, Wichita, KS hardly seems like a tourist destination for families. That's what I believed until I heard about Tanganyika Wildlife Park. Now, Tanganyika isn't like any other ordinary zoo. It features a multitude of different animals; many of which can actually be touched and/or fed. I'm not just talking about things like rabbits or guinea pigs though. We also got to touch kangaroos, lemurs, birds, goats in addition to getting to feed giraffes, hippos, and rhinos! I'm getting a little ahead of myself though.
We left after lunch on Sunday the 26th to start our journey to Wichita so that Ethan could have his traditional afternoon nap in the car. Once we finished our three-hour journey, we checked into the Drury Hotel in downtown Wichita where we would be spending the night. Spoiler alert: we were upgraded by the hotel staff which was a nice little surprise. We wasted little time in throwing on our swimsuits and heading down to the hotel pool to enjoy some swimming. After we'd all had our fill of time in the water, we changed back into our clothes and headed to the Drury Kickback for our dinner consisting of hot dogs, chicken, pasta, baked potatoes, vegetables, and salad. Before leaving the Kickback area, I made sure to sneak a couple of bags of freshly popped popcorn back upstairs for later.
Once we finished bathing the kids, we allowed them to curl up in their bed and watch TV for a while before it was time for actual sleep. We were lucky enough to stumble upon the movie, Night at the Museum for our viewing pleasure. Ellie and Ethan were especially stoked to be allowed to eat popcorn in their bed while watching the movie. Finally, Bethany and I decided it was time to bring an end to the night and we turned off the TV and put the kids to bed.
The next morning, we woke up bright and early and surprised Ellie with a "big bag of candy" per her birthday list before heading to breakfast. Following a nice breakfast, Bethany proceeded to lovingly pack a lunch bag full of sandwiches for Tanganyika. Finally, the time came for us to check out of the hotel and head to Tanganyika for the start of our fun day.
The first thing that we did upon arriving at Tanganyika was to make our way to the giraffe feeding pavilion. Now, we knew that we each had five animal feedings to use at our discretion. Therefore, we definitely needed to be particular with how we used them. That being said, the opportunity to feed a giraffe was too much to resist. We each took turns standing on a platform as directed by the zookeeper where we held out our big leaf of lettuce for the giraffe to take. None of us had ever fed a giraffe before so it was obviously a super cool experience!
After the giraffes, we wandered around the park for a little bit taking in a bunch of different animals. Most notable would probably be the kangaroos. We actually got the opportunity to pet kangaroos as they were laying on the ground, chill as they could be. There was even one mama kangaroo with a joey partially sticking out of her pouch! Once we finished up with the kangaroos, we made our way to our next feeding encounter at Lemur Island.
At Lemur Island, we were ushered across a small bridge and directed to sit on a rock in the middle of the island. From there, a keeper offered all four of us a cranberry to hold in our hands. Then, the zookeeper convinced a lemur to hop up on my lap and encouraged it to walk across each of our laps until it got to Bethany on the other end. Then, she told us to open up our hands and feed the lemur the cranberry as it walked back across. It was amazing to see the kids' reactions to seeing the lemur so up close. My favorite reaction had to be Ethan's as he slightly closed his hand which led to the lemur using his paws to force Ethan's hands open in his quest to eat the cranberry.
We honestly saw so many animals during our time at Tanganyika that I probably can't do it all justice. For example, between the four of us, in addition to the aforementioned giraffe and lemur, we also fed a guinea pig, a tortoise, a pygmy hippo and a rhino. Don't talk to Ellie about the hippo though. That's a sore subject as she was unable to successfully throw a carrot into the hippo's mouth, but Ethan was. There were tears and everything! However, you don't really want to be shown up by your younger brother in anything, let alone feeding a hippo.
There is one additional animal encounter that I do need to share though and that is our experience feeding lorikeets. It really seems like a pretty lowkey experience. You walk through an aviary and offer a small cup of nectar (maybe?) to lorikeets. Unfortunately for Bethany, the birds weren't just interested in the nectar contained in her cup. They were also interested in her hair. By the time we were done, Bethany had one bird on her shoulder and another on top of her head. To top it all off, both birds were picking at her hair with their beaks trying to find anything they could. As Bethany is someone who really doesn't like her head touched, you can only imagine how not fun of an experience that was for her. In the end, one of the workers had to come into the aviary and push the birds off of poor Bethany with her walkie-talkie antenna.
After we finished up our time with the animals, the kids spent some time playing at the Tanganyika splash park before it was time to head home. All things told, we were in Wichita for less than 24 hours. That being said, it was a great 24 hours full of things I'll personally remember for a long time to come. The fact that the kids are still talking about their experiences there gives me hope that they feel the same way.
#DaddyWrite
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