The road to Serengeti was hot, dusty and very bumpy. Not so good for the tires. Pole sana, Patrick.

Serengeti means “endless plains” in Maa, the language of the Maasai. It is the perfect name. We drove for hours on this beautiful endless plain. The park is so vast, and in addition to the flat grasslands, there also are hills, rocky outcrops called kjopes, watering holes and wooded areas.

We were introduced to all sorts of new animals, including this Topi. There were so many new grazing animals to learn!

On our first day in the park, we were lucky to spot this leopard hanging out in the tree. He was so relaxed and sleepy – and cute!

We also saw this male lion on our first day. He was with a female who is not pictured. After I took this photo, a young elephant walked over the lions, trumpeted at them and scared them away! It was so cool to watch the elephant take charge!

A short time later, we saw this pride of mothers and cubs. There were so many! We think the male we saw earlier was head of this pride.

Hippos are so cool! They just chill out in the water all day because the sun is bad for their skin. They will get out at night to feed. In the pond, they lay right next to each other, but they are pretty territorial on land.

We just can’t get over the elephants. We have more photos of elephants than anything else! They are so incredible and the babies are beyond adorable.

On the road to our campsite. A little different from the deer that I see on my drive home in Iowa. 🙂

We also regularly saw a group of male buffalo on our drive back to camp. Look at the flies all around him – we felt so bad for all the buffalos!

Lily’s favorite animal – the adorable dik dik. Full grown it’s about the size of a fawn. They hide out in bushes and can be hard to see. They mate for life so we usually see them in pairs.