FALL BREAK trip to Sedona, Arizona - DAY TWO

On this day we went to the Out of Africa Wild Animal Park just south of Sedona.  The first thing we did was take an open bus safari tour.

 This camel was a bottomless pit!  It ate a carrot out of every single person's hand on the bus...

 including mine!

 There were all kinds of animals you could see up close, but our favorites were the tigers. We watched a show the trainers did where they played with these huge cats as if they were kittens. They got the tigers to chase toys the trainers were holding and running away with. The trainers would leap into this big pool and the cats would leap in after them - sometimes on top of them. The tigers would even open their mouths on the trainers heads. In some cases they would chase the trainer down and sit on them. The only way to get the tiger off was to entice it by throwing an entire side of beef onto the ground. In order to get the beef the tiger had to get off the man and walk over to the beef.


Here is one of the tigers sitting on a trainer while the other trys to coax it off.  It wouldn't move until the trainer threw it some meat.  Who's training who?

This tiger actually has his open mouth on the head of another trainer who is struggling to keep his head above water with the weight of that heavy tiger on him.  The water is 5 feet deep.

 It was amazing to watch this tiger use the fence to leap high enough to reach the toy the trainer was holding up.

 There were a lot of popped pool toys at the end of the show.  The tigers didn't like to give them up.  Sometimes they wouldn't give them up even for the beef they were being bribed with.

 There's something a little wrong with watching a tiger go after a cuddly stuffed bear.

 Keep in mind that the water this tiger is leaping staight up out of is 5 feet deep...those are some powerful hind legs!

Morgan, Colton, and Kyle loved the big snake.

 When it was feeding time we followed the feeding truck as the men threw huge slabs of beef over the fence.  The predators are only fed every three days.  You should have heard the roars when the truck showed up.  They were ravenous and they knew what was coming.

 This tiger leaped into the air to catch his slab of beef.

Another really fun day!