Askania Nova

I mentioned that we were planning a trip; now we've returned from it. We went to Askania Nova for a few days. It was wonderful! True, it was a little cold and almost the end of their season, since they close for the winter next week. However, fall is beautiful there, and we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We have so, so, so many photos, that I hardly even know how to narrow down which to share.

On Wednesday we took a bus out to the park. It's a three-hour trip, which is so easy now, with these big kids that we have. I thought we would start off in Askania Nova with visiting the zoo part, but they had closed early, so we wandered through the dendropark (arboretum?) and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

The most beautiful view there

Then we went back to our hotel, ate dinner in the cafe, had a dance party in the room (!), and kind of froze for the rest of the night, which is the downside of going this late in the year.

The next day we went on a great walking excursion. The steppe "safaris" are already done for this year, but we were able to hire a guide for the dendropark and zoo. She was really good. First she showed us all over the dendropark, told us about the history and many of the plants and animals. Just when she was listing off the wild animals that live there--squirrels, rabbits...--Jaan pointed out a rabbit running by!

Then, after a quick break, our tour guide took us on to the zoo part. Oh, first she had the kids collect lots of acorns to feed the animals. There were signs everywhere saying not to feed, but she said that we won't feed them, we'll just "treat" them; plus, we were with her, so it was okay.  We started with feeding walnuts to the peacocks, who then followed us through the rest of the zoo. Then we moved on through the other birds, including a secret backstage visit to the ones that had already been removed from display for the winter, and then to the the larger animals.

Asya was cracking more nuts for the peacocks.

A highlight was meeting Borya. The backstory is that before we left home one of our neighbours said, "Tell the goats there hi from me." That neighbour is our kids' "Uncle Borya." Then, when we got to the area with the goats, our guide called this one (below) over to the fence, explaining that he's her favourite... and his name is Borya! We told him hello from Uncle Borya, took lots of photos of him, and bought a magnet with him (or one like him) on it for the human Borya.

Who knew that bison like acorns?

When our tour was over we had lunch with this very rude guy in the background, constantly threatening to spit on us:

Next we went to the wild bird area, which hadn't been a part of the tour.

By the time we were done there, we were cold and tired, so we went back to the hotel for a short rest and warmup, before our planned time of painting that beautiful scene we had noticed the day before: the green meadow with twilight, fall colors, and the moon. Raia, Asya, and I painted until it was completely dark. Then we all had another nice dinner at the hotel cafe.

For Friday I had planned that we would have some more time in the park, but the midday bus the internet listed isn't real, so we had to leave early. Plus, one of Raia's friends had called to invite her to a birthday party. We had another three-hour bus ride, which took a different route than the one on the way out. This one should have been called The Steppe Village Tour. Lots of the roads it covered were dirt tracks through fields. Very scenic. As we came into Kherson and passed the mall, we pushed Raia out to find her friends and the birthday party, while the rest of us continued on to the bus station and home. Raia got home from that party just in time to go to the yearly American/Canadian girls sleepover. See why she actually wanted to stay home yesterday?

And that wraps up our lovely fall holidays.