Friday, September 07, 2012

Ferleiten Animal park

After our nice day of hiking and swimming, we thought we would do something more child focused.  We had many many brochures and internet pages to go through outlining the various activities in the area.  After some deliberation, we decided on the “Wildpark Ferleiten.”   This was described as an attraction combining a small animal park with examples of local wildlife, along with a sort of kiddie amusement park/playground.  It was also only about a 20 min drive from the house, so it seemed like a pretty good choice.

The entrance had a nice looking bear statue that the kids of course had to climb all over.  Notice that Liam is fully decked out in his German Fußball fan uniform for this trip.

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The animal area was nice with very large enclosures on the mountainside for them to walk about.  The actual selection of animals was not particularly exotic, deer, mountain sheep, some wolves.  Mostly things typical to the region which to be fair is not super different to what can be found in Canada.  So I don’t think anyone was super impressed with the “exoticness” of them, but it is always nice to look at animals.  The kids got to feed quite a few of them as well, which is always a popular choice.

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There was one super-exotic animal that was heavily promoted all over the region.  Seriously this was one of the main attraction getting top billing over wolves and bears… here is the very special and hard to encounter…. groundhog.  Cherie even managed to get a photo of this rare beauty.

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The location of the park itself was also one of the main features.  It is on the side of a mountain, next to the entrance to a national park, with an enormous waterfall across the street.  There was all kinds of natural majesty shoved in our faces and we did enjoy it a lot.  Here is the lovely Claudia standing in front of some mountains that still manage to have snow on them this late in the year.

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A nice photo of Cherie with the huge waterfall in the background.

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Here is the behind the scenes photo of how Mike took that picture… I just thought it was funny to show the “behind the curtains” view.

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Here are the happy Starrs.  Look how nice they can smile when the children are off amusing themselves and not needing any entertaining/supervision. 

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And I thought it was funny that in between taking the first and second photos (just in case)  Liam managed to run in and insert himself in the portrait.  He also managed to smile nicer than he ever does when I want him to pose for a family photo as will become evident in future posts.

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So that covers the first bit of the Wildpark.  Stay tuned for the rides….

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