Monday, March 27, 2017

Day Trip: Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch

Last weekend, in keeping with our life goal to visit every drive-through animal park in America, we decided to head down to New Braunfels, which is near San Antonio and less than an hour from Austin, to visit the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch. I sort of kid about this being our life goal, but sort of not. There was a place near us when we lived in Missouri called the Wild Animal Safari, and I'm 100% sure it was not legal. But it was also the greatest place on Earth. You could drive through and the animals were always hungry enough to run up to your car and stick their heads in. You could also purchase raw chicken at the front desk to stick on the end of a pole and feed to tigers, who would often fight over it. Like I said, probably not legal.


Anyway, thus began our fascination with wild animal parks, and here we are. The Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch is much classier, larger, and probably more regulated than the Wild Animal Safari, which made for a fun day, but sadly not as many animal heads in the car. This was fine with Peter, who was mainly concerned with keeping any form of antlers away from the car, but Ali and I were trying to lure the animals as close as possible, naturally.

These deer totally DGAF that we were driving a few feet away holding some form of pellet food out to them. 
Looking slightly more interested...
Finally, some cow/deer hybrid thing made its way up to our car and Ali way overjoyed. 
Not entirely sure what these were, but they weren't too interested in us. Kind of the theme of the day. Part of our problem, I think, was that we visited the park on a Sunday during what we later figured out was spring break for most Texas schools. There was a legitimate traffic jam at one point, complete with a fender bender, so maybe the animals were a bit overfed on this particular day.
So pretty...whatever it is! Peter was especially concerned with this guy getting close to the car.
Ali was especially concerned with him walking away.
The classic giraffe exhibit.
Some more unidentified species hanging out. This places was HUGE and had some really pretty areas to drive through.

All in all, the day trip was totally worth it. The landscape was so pretty, and so were the animals, even though they weren't that concerned with us! There's some sort of cave attraction just next door to the wildlife ranch, so you know we'll be back to check it out.

2 comments:

  1. So I've lived in Texas my whole life, and I've still never been here before. I've seen the signs all over the place, but I'm pretty sure that my dad was probably worried about antlers scratching up the car as well, which is probably why we never went. I'm glad that y'all had a good time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This was the best day. Let's go back!

    ReplyDelete

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Welcome! I started Laura and Peter Down Under in July 2014 when my husband and I moved from the States to Melbourne, Australia for his job. I blog about expat life, our travels, food, and whatever else comes to mind. Follow along on our adventures Down Under!

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