I couldn’t get a wide enough shot to get them all in a picture, just a small part of the herd.

Tarangire national park is known for its elephants and while we had seen some the first day we were in for a huge surprise the second day. Caitlin was hoping to see the big cats and as we set out in the morning we got to see a couple of male lions, we thought that was going to be the highlight but the elephants stole the show on the second day. We watched hundreds of them walk across the landscape and get within feet of our jeep. Watching them lumber across, I couldn’t help but think of dinosaurs. They are so large and slowly trod along eating and chewing the whole way. The massive size was so much fun to watch, we just sat in the jeep watching them graze.

A view of our permanent tent from the lodge we stayed at in Tarangire.

Not an elephant but still pretty cool.

Simba, cool but not the highlight. We learned that simba is swahili for lion. Thank you very much Disney.

Momma with her baby. It was so young.

Prosper said he didn’t think it was more than a month or two.

He said they would nurse for about 4-5 years.

A view of the park. We got so lucky with beautiful weather everyday.

A Tawny Eagle.

Banded Mongoose, didn’t realize how ugly they are.

A Kori Bustard, the largest flying bird in Africa.

An elephant scratching himself after a bath.

Elephants in the mud hole. We watched them bathe as we had lunch.

Lilac Breasted Roller, super common but super pretty.

Elephants fording the river, I would have rocked Oregon trail with an elephant instead of an oxen.

Mom and child.

I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them.

They always surrounded the babies.

Munching away.

Walking along.

Stopping for a snack.

We stopped and watched them walk around us, the view out the back of the jeep.

The view out the right.

The view from the facing out the front of the jeep.

They all lined up to walk up the hill.

The little ones playing.

Still playing

Trying to show who was boss.

Doing curls for the girls. We watched this guy scratch his own stomach, talk about skills.

After we were done watching them pass us, we started to head out only to discover that couldn’t continue because they had stopped in the middle of the road. If you look carefully you’ll see a baby sleeping. Apparently if the baby gets tired it will just lay down and the rest of the herd will circle around the baby and stop. We ended up having to off road it in a wide circle to avoid angering the moms by getting too close.