Nature adventure

I always look forward to weekend. It is time to stop being in the rush, forget about school and work, and do something fun as a family. Growing up I spend most of my weekends in the countryside. My grandma lived just 30 minutes away from my town, by a national park.  I loved to visit her, learn about farm life and quietly observe surrounding nature. Nowadays I feel guilty that my kids don’t get similar experience. Therefore, when my friend told me about a Fawn-Doe-Rosa, a place where kids can interact with wild and domestic animals, I knew we had to visit it.

Early Saturday morning I packed our lunch and our family headed to St Croix Falls. After over an hour drive, we got to our destination. To enter the park we had to go through visitor center. While my husband was standing in a line to purchase tickets and animal feed, kids and me admired variety of souvenirs. Before I could hear, “Mamma buy me this toy” my husband was back and we headed outside to the park. Two cute lambs greeted us by the door. My kids were delighted. I picked one up so they could pet it.  After that my son decided he wanted to hold it, and we took some pictures.

We were so occupied with these cute animals, that we didn’t even have a chance to have a look at the park. I was impressed how big and well maintained it was. In front of us were cages with smaller animals. On the left side was a large open space with a small pound in the middle and a bridge going over it. I could see some deer and geese freely walking there. On the right side enclosures with domestic animals were located. That’s where we decided to go first.  

Hungry for attention sheep were bleating when we walked by them. We had to stop and feed them before moving to goats, lamas, donkeys and ponies. At first, my kids were hesitant to put their tiny hands by sheep’s mouths, but after doing it for the first time all worries were gone.  Even their slimy hands weren’t an issue.  After seeing domestic animals, we headed to wild animals’ enclosures.  We didn’t know before how funny and smart deer are. My kids were very focused on feeding deer that were behind a wooden fence. They were giggling the whole time. To our surprise, another deer that was walking freely in the park came to us and started sniffing my son’s bag with feed. It looked like he was trying to steal it. I advised my son to close the bag. After that the deer left.

After exploring the park for over two hours we had to say bye to this amazing place. While driving back home kids keep asking us, “when can we come back here again?” Excited about our kids new passion we promised them to be back next year.