Living Desert

This past Saturday we got to visit the Living Desert. My friend and I planned this trip a couple of months in advance, we figured that mid-November would be the perfect time to visit the Living Desert because the weather would be cool. Well despite the fact that we had many cooler days last week, Saturday was freakin hot. Did I mention this place is out in Palm Desert? Bryan actually brought a Camel Back filled with ice water along with our cameras. The Living Desert is out in the middle of nowhere; you could easily pass it on the road. When we arrived we immediately lathered on sunscreen; this is the desert after all. We walked in and the first exhibit we visited was the giraffe and ostrich exhibit. I love these animals. Giraffes are so impressive to look at and they are amazingly beautiful. There are four giraffes and one ostrich in the exhibit. It took us about half an hour to move on from that exhibit because we all couldn’t stop photographing.

 We ate soon after entering the park. I have to say, even though the Living Desert is considered a “theme” park you definitely don’t pay theme park prices for food, which is always good. After our meal we moved on to zebra exhibit. Zebra’s have always been one of my favorite wild animals, probably because they resemble horses so much, and because they have really cute floppy ears. Next to the zebra exhibit is the cheetah exhibit. We spent a lot of time photographing the one cheetah we saw. It kind of just laid there lazily as we took it’s picture, we actually called out to it to do something but all it did was get up and walk to some tall grass and laid down so we couldn’t see it. Cheetah’s don’t seem to take direction very well. After giving up on the cheetah we moved to the gazelle and oryx exhibits. Next to them was a large rocky mountain where the bighorn sheep were. Standing out there for that short time to photograph the bighorn sheep really reminded me that I was out in the desert, the heat was unbearable.

 We then made our way over to where the mountain lion exhibit was. We didn’t actually see any mountain lions but we saw a lot of other animals including meerkats, some animals that looked like domestic house cats and a really cool bobcat. The bobcat had the biggest feet I’ve ever seen. I was amazed how big the cat actually was. The last thing we got to see while we were there was the Mexican wolf. Even though they were sleeping when we saw them we still got some pretty great photos. We left around 2pm, we didn’t want to be there when it got really hot. Even though the trip was short it was a lot of fun and I would definitely want to go again. Hopefully when it’s actually cooler.

To see more photos from our Living Desert visit check out our GALLERY.