If you want a fun day trip, don't mind being overwhelmed by cute, and want to get up close and personal with a camel or perhaps an ostrich, then you should consider a visit to the Virginia Safari Park, located off Interstate 81, just south of Lexington and northwest of Lynchburg --- right beside Natural Bridge.
They have a variety of land mammals and birds, such as llamas, giraffes, pot-bellied pigs, bison, emus, elk, zebras, camels, and some endangered African animals.
You can either drive through the three-mile trail or you can ride in a wagon, pulled by a tractor. As you drive along, the animals will come up to the car and you can feed them special food from plastic buckets. We bought four buckets of food for $10, and that was about the right amount for the three-mile trip.
Some of the critters will be happy to relieve you of your bucket if you aren't careful:
You also have to be careful that you don't get an additional passenger in your car:
In addition to the safari trail, they also have a giraffe feeding station, a kangaroo walk-about, a lorikeet landing, primates, tigers, warthogs, an aviary, and a petting area.
So it was a nice day trip up in the beautiful Virginia mountains, where the buffalo do roam and the antelope do play. Camels too.
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