Last week I wrote about road trips, and then just yesterday I took a brief day-trip excursion with my daughter and grandsons. The boys are 6 and 3, so road trips need to be either short or incorporate many stops to keep them enjoyable for everyone. Our destination lay about 90 minutes from home, straight up Interstate 5 to the little town of Winston, set amid grass- and oak-covered rolling hills along a fork of the Umpqua River.

Now, kids can sit for hours on end watching Paw Patrol and other TV shows, but 90 minutes strapped into a car seat can get old for them quickly. We helped them mark our progress by noting that we had to go over four passes before we got to our exit from the freeway. There then ensued a conversation about what a “pass” and a “summit” were, and we noted when we started going uphill. Everyone watched for the sign marking each summit, and we read out the numbers proclaiming the elevation (another vocabulary lesson). We also noted a few areas where large wildfires burned a few years ago and saw large swaths of bare mountainside that had recently been logged. Other distractions included a small airstrip, bridges and rivers, and (these being boys) all kinds of trucks. We also practiced spotting birds and animals to prepare for our destination, for we were going on a safari!

Wildlife Safari is the only drive-through animal park in Oregon and is accredited with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Established in 1972, it encompasses over 600 acres, home to more than 600 animals representing over 100 different species. Less than 10 miles off the interstate, it attracts more than 200,000 visitors annually (not bad for being far from any large city) and boasts the most successful cheetah breeding program in the United States. I recall visiting it with my college roommates back in 1977 when it consisted of little more than the winding, dusty drive-through portion and a few manufactured buildings where you could buy a cold drink and some souvenirs and have your picture taken with a cheetah. It has really expanded since then, with animals representing five continents and lots of amenities and opportunities to interact with them. I’ll share more on that next week, but here are some photos and a brief explanation of our drive-through experience.

We got a few instructions as we picked up a map with sketches of the animals we would see as we passed through regions representing Africa, wetlands, the Americas and Asia. We could have windows down but should not reach outside the car and close the windows if an animal got very close. James, the youngest, made it clear he wanted his window closed at all times!

Our most exciting encounter came shortly after we started when a giraffe ambled alongside the road in a field ahead of us   and then gracefully crossed right in front of us. It was still early enough in the day that animals were moving about, though plenty were already staking out places to sprawl in the shade. We spotted two rhinos, several zebras and an assortment of various hoofed and horned grazers (kudus, elands, wildebeests and lovely scimitar oryxes among them), while rheas, ostriches and emus  strutted about among them.

The hippopotami had already found their happy place in a cool, muddy pond   I should mention that we let the boys get out of their car seats (as we rolled along at less than 10 mph), and they enjoyed the ability to get into better positions to see the critters (and the novelty of standing up in a moving car!). They were better than us, often, in spotting lions resting in the shade or deer in the underbrush. As I was wondering out loud what kind of animal we were looking at as two white beasts grazed near a fence two park employees were fixing, three-year-old James explained, with just a hint of exasperation, “Granny, those are people; they not animals!”

We passed the large elephant habitat before passing into the Americas portion, where a sizable number of bison grazed     alongside guanacos (a South American relative of the llama), and Roosevelt elk, sporting enormous antlers, settled in under the trees.   We also cruised past some brown bears; one’s coat still glistened with water after his dip in a pond.

We ended our 90-plus-minute loop around the park passing through an area where we could dole out food to various grazers: black buck deer,   fallow deer and sika deer. These residents were obviously used to getting handouts and weren’t shy about approaching vehicles and poking their noses through the open windows. 

We really enjoyed the first part of our safari; more animal encounters to come next week.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor