Whenever we have visitors come, it’s hard to know what to give for Christmas, as they then have to pack it all up and take it back with them!

Giving an Experience is a fabulous way to build memories, bring you closer together and enjoy “the moment” with your friends and loved ones.

Several years back we discovered that we have a Giraffe Ranch here in Dade City. There are only 4 giraffes, but since there are only around 350 in the ENTIRE United states, to have 4 right here in our town is truly amazing!

This was really the first excursion that we’ve ever taken our grandson, Andrew, on. He’s only 15 months old, but we knew that he’d enjoy some interaction, even at this age. And of course, it’s important to us, that we, as adults learn and grow with most activities, as well!

They offer vehicle tours, where you stay inside your vehicle and a tour guide rides a segway around in the pasture, and talks about the various animals. You’re following the segway, right in with the animals.

We’ve done this tour one other time. In fact, it was during COVID and I thought that the drive through tour was a fabulous idea. No one is tired, hot, thirsty, gets lost, wanders off, goes places he/she isn’t supposed to, and it’s a relatively short amount of time invested, so even the youngest visitor can be interested at least part of the time, so that Mama and Daddy can enjoy at least some of the trip, instead of tending to cranky kids.

We started with the huge ostrich. Those were especially fun because it is mating season. The males are showing off, and the females are running from them. They also loved coming up to the vehicles. They were not scared of us at all.

Then we went on to see several types of deer and things that looked like an antelope, but weren’t. We did see spring deer, but nothing sprang out and ran. That would have been cool to see.

We got to see beautiful giraffes. They have only 4 giraffes there, but since they are breeding them there, it’s super interesting to see. They are incredibly tall and expensive to keep! If you don’t look carefully you’ll miss the baby giraffe behind the pole.

Probably one of the most interesting things we saw was a Zonkey - a cross between a zebra and a donkey.

There are VERY few of these that are alive and documented in the USA.

Enjoy the views. Note the fun legs. He is a sterile male, so welcomed into the herd of lady zebras!

This particular zebra has an incredibly unusual pattern. Did you know that insects are bothered by zebra stripes? It’s recommended to try a zebra stripe table cloth for your next picnic!

Then we saw an amazing rhinocerous. He’s from India and seems to love it in Florida.

Camels are always fun and remind me of Israel and Egypt, where I’ve ridden camels.

There’s a leopard hiding up there in his cage.

The cheetas are absolutely beautiful, albeit deadly, animals. They are NOT tamed, nor pets.

The tour rounded out with a variety of hard to see monkeys, and some other fun critters like warthogs and some interesting pigs, along with deer of some unusual sort that loved to walk in water.

All in all, it’s not an inexpensive tour at $150 for the carload, but considering that no one else was there, we had a private tour, and could ask all the questions we wanted, we felt it fair. In fact, it didn’t seem enough to run the operation. Our car radio didn’t work, so we had our guide ride up next to us in her segway, and we were able to ask her all the questions we wanted. I felt in this day of scripted, mechanical animals, and screens everywhere, that it was well worth having undivided attention, real animals, no screens, only a real live human talking, and a car ride to boot!

Because the whole event took only about an hour, and we saw a wide variety of animals, it was a lot of fun for all of us. We learned things, yet didn’t exhaust ourselves, nor did we have to give up a whole day to do this. (Remember, the store was still open, so we had to tend to that before and after we went!)

So, all in all, we highly recommend this fun activity.

If you’re interested, reserve your space online here:

You can’t feed the giraffes without paying more and getting a special tour. But it is an available option for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. With so few giraffes even in existence, we felt privileged to get to see these beautiful animals.

Note from Becky - Thank you so much for the visit, Rachael! Looks like a lot of fun!

We’ll have to try it with our grandkids!

Oh - if you happen to want some giraffe fabric, we have some! These panels feature them all by themselves. Otherwise, most of the giraffe fabric in yardage are mixed up with the other African safari type animals.

Here are 3 very nice panels we have! If you click on them they take you to the page on the site where they are.