Hope For Wildlife

It's Sunday!!!!!! You know what that means :) Time for another family day trip. Today we were invited by some friends to go to an awesome place called Hope For Wildlife. I can't believe we have never taken the time to come here. The kids had so much fun running from enclosure to enclosure to see what animals were being taken care of and best of all, IT'S FREE!! Hope For Wildlife is a rescue society for injured or abandoned animals. The people who work here are super friendly and knowledgeable about all the animals in their care. They do accept donations, but don't expect them. They sell a lot of items in their gift shop to raise money also. There is something for everyone, from a $1 chocolate to a $60 jacket, and more. It's a really fun place to take children under 12 for sure, but really, as an adult I loved it just as much as the kids did.

Located in Seaforth/Head of Chezzetcook, NS, it is about a 35 minute drive from Cole Harbour or 40 mins from Dartmouth. The drive is very scenic. You are driving next to water about 50% of the way there. The waves were awesome today, so we were able to see a few surfers along the way. We rarely get to see them anywhere we usually go. I guess that's why we are trying to make sure we do more venturing. :) Right now it is the off-season so they are only open on the weekends, but during the summer they are open 7 days a week.  So here is how our day went........

This isn't actually from today. Haha. I didn't have a pic from church today.
This is from when Seth thought this was an awesome parking job <3

.....first we went to church. If I haven't mentioned it already, Bill and I teach a Sunday school class with nine to eleven year old girls. Today's lesson was about The Good Samaritan. It's basically a story about someone who clearly had a rough day, and instead of people helping him, they went out of their way to avoid going near him(that's the gentle version). Then one person, who was supposed to be his enemy, couldn't leave him like that even if they hated each other. He took him to a place that could help him and made sure he would be taken care of. So for our lesson, we taught the girls that if they ever see someone in need, they should always try to help if they are able. Kind of like paying it forward(and I explained that it doesn't mean you always have to spend money on someone in a drive-thru). Then we found a need we could help with. The churches nursery only had one leader(Jayden), because one had to leave early, and there were about 6(baby to toddler) in the nursery. So our way of being good Samaritans was to go and help take care of the little ones in nursery. The girls loved it. I think Jayden did too...Haha. I'm hoping that this showed the girls that even the simplest things are huge when they help someone who needs it  :)  After Church we were going to do what we do every week, go home and google day trips and pick one, but before we left we were invited to go with our friends to Hope For Wildlife. It was an awesome choice!

We drove home to quickly eat some lunch and get ready to go. We weren't as prepared as normal, but I will get to that later...Haha. After the long drive(I say long because the winding roads make you drive so much slower) we had arrived. Now we had never been here before and our friends had. So when we saw them park near the road, we assumed that's where we had to park. Turns out, Roberto just loves to walk...Haha. This trail here is the connector from the roadside parking lot to the actual parking lot. We only bugged him for most of the time there...Haha. No one really minded walking. At the end of this little trail was the welcome area and gift shop.

As you can see in the picture above, they have a wildlife drop off area and also guided tours. The tours are also absolutely free and they offer them every hour on the hour. We didn't take one just because we wanted to go along at our own pace. We spent a while in the gift shop. There is a lot of really cool stuff to look at. There's memorabilia, clothing, snacks, animal enclosures, and educational stuff too.

These are some of the wildlife we got to see in the welcome center. The first one is a tortoise and the second one is a turtle. The difference between the two is that tortoises live on land while turtles live in the water, some if not all of the time. The guide let the kids touch the tortoise. The third pic is of a bird, but now I can't remember which one :( I should've taken a pic of the sign. Every animal they have, has a sign with facts about the animal as well as their actual story of why they had to be rescued and whether they will be eligible for release back into the wild.

We left the welcome center and moved on to the next building. These were pelts that were donated to the rescue. Some were from people who inherited them and wanted to pass them on and some were confiscated from illegal poachers. I'm not against hunting because you need to eat, but I am definitely against killing for a trophy and wasting the rest of the animal with no regard for it's life. Some people are just terrible! They were all really beautiful looking animals. It was so sad to see, but I'm glad they are being used to educate people now. 

In the same building, there were some live animals. There was a groundhog, a rabbit, a brown rat, a chinchilla(that somebody abandoned at Point Pleasant Park in Halifax???? These are not wild creatures in Canada people), sugar gliders(I think that's what they were called), and there was more, I just can't remember what now.

We walked up a trail and found a whole bunch of different things. I didn't take pictures of everything, but there were Grey Squirrels(which are an invasive species), Red Squirrels, a Barred Owl, a really tall tower that we climbed(the view was amazing), but as soon as it started rocking in the wind I got totally motion sick and had to come back down(Also it said use at your own risk and I wasn't having any part of that....Haha). At the bottom of this tower was a cage with props for photo ops. :) The kids LOVED it!! There were signs that said, "don't feed the animals", "cougar", "I'm in rehab", etc. It was so much fun. :) The kids made us take about a million photos! 

Next up was this little guy. He was so excited to see people coming to visit him. The only thing is, he couldn't really see. He was brought in for an injury of some sort, but after he was all healed up they realized he was blind. He can see shadows near him and got a little spooked when we came near him, but after he realized we were friendly, he stopped shying away. He was going to be released if his eyes got better, but they don't think that will happen now and he will most likely stay at the rescue.

Look at how cute he is!! He's sitting there because he knows that the staff member in his enclosure has food :) He was so gentle with her too. It's sad that he will live in captivity now, but it seems like a great place to have to stay. If only he had more room to run around.

This is Ayla with her people....Haha. This completely reminds me of when Jayden was 6 :) Like seriously!! We have a picture of Jayden with a ton of chickens. We were at a farm and they kept following her wherever she went. She joked about how they were "her people". It was an ongoing thing forever. Actually, it never went away?!?! Every single year her cake says "HAPPY HATCH DAY" because she says she was hatched from an egg like her chicken friends....Haha. If I can find that picture, I will add it to this post later :) We always joke about how Madison is Amy's twin and Ayla is Jayden's twin. It really is true. Everyday the girls remind me of their older twins. It's actually even hard to tell some of the older girls pics apart from the younger ones. Sometimes the only giveaway is the clothes they are wearing or the friends we are with.

Anywhere you walk around here you see ducks, geese, peafowl, etc. The girls loved being able to just venture anywhere.

Madison and Ellie taking a break :) After we let them venture around for a bit, we went for a walk down on the beach. This is where the "not coming prepared" comes into play....Haha.

This is Ayla....Notice she is bootless? This is a few minutes after a wave soaked her all the way up to her dress :) So she decided to play in the sand because she was freezing and didn't want to go near the water anymore(I don't blame her. The wind was strong and I was even cold dry).

This is Madison....Notice she is becoming bootless....Haha. This is second after she came sloshing up to me with her boots full of water and wet up to her dress because a wave swept over her. Can you see the trend?!?! We didn't bring a change of clothes because we didn't plan for a beach trip. I have a great video of her getting soaked and I just figured out how to upload it :)

We decided to go home, after Max decided that he was already wet so why not just lay down in the waves and get fully soaked. It was priceless. Good thing he has really easy going parents... Haha. What a silly boy :) At least Ellie stayed relatively dry. She must be the sensible one of the group. All I know is that Madison and Ayla wore their jackets on their laps in the car as pants :) Better than going pantless.  It was a really fun day! Even if I didn't get in any pics :(
Thanks for the invite guys! We will have to do it again sometime.

Best roadtrip ever!......Until the next one :)