Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, near San Antonio, TX

Living in the ever growing Houston area? If your kids love animals and a trip to the zoo, you must take them to this safari in the Texas Hill Country. It is located between San Antonio and New Braunfels, two nice cities to visit as well. Natural Bridge and Wildlife Ranch is open 362 days a year and has the safari, a petting zoo, a learning center and some other animals, but the highlight is the safari per say. You drive your car among the animals on a 4 mile loop and then you park to see the rest. We spent over one hour on the safari only. There are about 500 animals representing 40 different species. At the gate you will be offered a CD which will "guide" you. We didn't like it much, as our pace was different from that of the CD, besides we were so excited by all these beautiful different faces coming to eat out of our hands that we didn't want to pay attention to the CD (they recommend throwing the food on the ground, but yes we broke the rule and we loved it!). I do recommend the book though because it explains all the animals they have. You get some food to feed the animals included with your admission, but you have the option to buy more if you want. There is a "grill restaurant" but it actually has snacks and a lot of unhealthy choices (everything is fried!). I recommend you bring your lunch if you prefer to eat healthy. They do have a coupon for the restaurant on their website. If you are staying at a hotel in the area, you can find coupons on area maps or brochures.

I had never seen so many different types of deer and antelope (like the one above), cattle, bison, ostriches, zebras and many others! The animals look really healthy and are quite friendly. They will come to your windows to eat because they know you have food! We were crazy enough to feed even the bison from our hands (I had never seen one up close, they are HUGE!), but again this is not the recommendation... we are just a weird family that would go to any zoo before going to an amusement park! So ... we , had to know who had a soft or rough thong, who had  a pale pink or black mouth... 
Get the camera ready before you start and if you have a sunroof you will be able to get awesome shots from the top! If you can make a video you may get lucky and get the nosy zebra below! Have fun!

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