Wildlife Prairie Park

Three years ago, while in Illinois, we went to Wildlife Prairie Park and spent the night in the caboose. I thought it would be fun to go again. Sofia and Nancy joined us and the six of us stayed in this caboose. (Nancy is married to Darren, Keith's youngest son....Sofia is their 2 year old daughter) My friend Robin and her 2 kids also stayed in a caboose.

It was so hot and humid....the cabooses were air conditioned, but we made the kids stay outside until it was dark. We were all "glowing" with a nice layer of sweat.

My mom's friend Mavis (Robin's mom) came out for the evening and brought a delicious chocolate cake for my mom's birthday...along with party hats.

Syd was so hot and kept lifting her shirt up. I finally let her just take it off and then we all laughed at how she reminded us of Mogli from Jungle Book.

After dinner we took an evening walk to the big slide. Here are all the kids sitting on one of the smaller slides. For a video of Syd going down the big slide, scroll down to the end.

We passed this statue of Sacajawea on our walk.

Sydney (aka Mogli) then proceeded to be a statue.

We didn't make it back before it turned dark, nor did we remember to take flashilights.

When we returned, we had a racoon family digging through the garbage cans. We counted at least 5 of them....not one bit afraid of us.

Finally we showered and cooled off in the air-conditioned caboose.

In the morning, we headed to the main part of the park to see some animals. We didn't see any because it was way too hot (the bear was in his shelter with a fan on him), but we had fun taking pictures with different statues and such.

Kayleigh on the famous horse...

One of my favorite memories of Wildlife Prairie Park was the one room school house and pioneer town. We made our way to this part of the park and I was excited for the girls to see it - especially since we've read some of the Little House books this year.

Unfortunately, the park is very low on funding and therefore staff, so it was all closed and/or boarded up.

Inside the school door there was this list of rules....

We could walk in the front door, but the entrance to the main building was closed.

Here are a couple videos of Sydney coming down the slide....