Fair Day

One of the benefits of working for a rural school district is that Tom gets a day off in September as "Fair Day".  The Ashland County Fair was held last week, and Friday was the day.  We took the kids to the fair on Monday evening, and saved Tom's day off for something even better.

We spent the afternoon on Friday at Rolling Ridge Animal Park. We took a wagon tour of their 80 acres and enjoyed close encounters with the animals.  The animals get their regular feedings from the tourists during the warmer months, so they follow the wagon very closely to catch all they can.

And they are not shy at all about asking... 

Or just helping themselves, if you don't watch your feed carefully.

 

I had a bit of trouble getting good close-ups of our encounters, because I had to be far enough back to actually get them in the frame.

 

With trying to hold a baby, draw in the animal with the feed bucket, and actually snap the picture, it was quite a little dance.

 

 

Ellie loved the close views... 

 

 

 

 Tommy too, although he was actually having a pretty bad tooth pain day, and his smiles were a little harder to come by.

 

 Notice the mud on the side of the wagon? 

 

 Tom and Tommy had a very close encounter with this muddy Elk.  Tom came home with quite a bit of mud on his back after this guy snuck up behind them.

 

At the petting zoo area, Tommy found a carrot on the ground.  He carried it around for a while, and I didn't see him nibbling on it, even though he had eaten several pieces of the kibble that we fed the animals on the wagon tour.  I think he must have recognized this as a vegetable, which means it is classified as touch only, no taste. 

 

And the petting zoo animals actually stayed further away than the wagon tour animals.  We apparently arrived right at feeding time and as we went to each of several pens, the keeper came and fed the animals.  They all stayed busy with their hay, so there was nobody for Tommy to pawn that carrot off on. 

 

Ellie did spy one loose chicken.  For a second I thought I was going to have to watch her pet it... 

But like her shirt says, she's one smart cookie, so she changed her mind and walked away.

All in all, a terrific day, and we will definitely go back another day.  No lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) so we will also hit up a traditional zoo, but you just can't beat the close encounters with a yak that we found here.

And on Saturday, we were scheduled for a photography session, but Tommy fell and hit his head.  He got quite a good sized bump right between the eyebrows, so we had to cancel that.  We'll try again next month.