Lazy 5 Ranch Field Trip
During high school and college, when I was a summer day camp counselor my favorite field trip was Lazy 5 Ranch. While the variety of animals at Lazy 5 may not be as exotic as those at the zoo, there is something special about the ability to touch and feed the animals from the horse-drawn wagons at the ranch. However, I hesitated to take my own children to Lazy 5 since several of them have shown extreme fear towards unknown animals {not even large animals} in the past and ALL of my children have a knack for very dramatic behavior when frightened. This year when I finally decided to give the ranch a try I was more than a bit worried about keeping all of them from hysterics on our trip.
While all the children took a bit of time to work up enough courage to allow an animal to eat from their hand, they immediately loved being in the wagon close to the animals. Thankfully, the wagon has a middle bench that keeps the riders away from the animals and Rebekah was happy to ride where she would watch the animals from a relatively safe distance. About 3/4 of the way through the wagon ride she got brave enough to feed the large animals by dropping food into their mouths. She would not consider feeding even the small deer and goats who needed to take food from her hand. 
Michael had a brief scare the first time an animal took food from his hand and was convinced that the animal bit him. I was proud of him for quickly giving it another try. In the end, he fed the biggest variety of animals not caring how big, messy or enthusiastic they were.
Peyton and Miriam loved the smallest animals. They were quite funny working to get food to the little animals while fussing at the large animals who pushed the smaller ones out of the way. 
The children are already asking when we can visit Lazy 5 again. Much had changed at the ranch since my visits years ago. We spent the entire day there after our wagon ride enjoying a picnic lunch, a large petting zoo, and a playground. It was a lovely day!
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