Denver

Today it was mostly driving with a nearly 4 hour drive down to Denver.
We had one planned stop for the day and it was only about three quarters of an hour from where we were staying.
So glad we made that stop though. The Wild Animal Sanctuary was fantastic. This is another not for profit place, with no government funding that is doing a fantastic job of rescuing and protecting a range of wild animals.
They have tigers, lions, grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes and other smaller 'big cats' and a range of more common animals too.
This place has been set up in a way that they treat and acclimate the rescued animals before 'retiring' them to larger (5 to 25 acre) pens. They've built a walkway 33 feet above these pens so that visitors can walk along and see the animals without impacting on their territory as much.
We were amazed by how many tigers they had. We could see at least 30 in their newly rescued pens and larger enclosures. The lady gave us a

brief introductory speech before we began and whilst most of it was about safety and protecting the animals, it was shocking to hear the statistic that there are more tigers in captivity in Texas alone than there are wild tigers in the world. She also said that there are something like 30,000 wild animals (that are known of) being kept as pets or for entertainment purposes (not zoo animals) across the United States.
Each pen has a little description of the animals in there, including where. why or how the animals were rescued. Some of these stories were a "what the?" because many were animals people had tried to raise as pets before realising this wasn't going to work, whilst others were "what the?" moments purely because of the hideous ways in which these animals had been raised and treated prior to their rescue. Definitely reinforced the fact that anmals may be wild, but some people are just horridly cruel. (eg. one of the tiger pens had tigers rescued from a man's house where 30+ adult tiger bodies were found decomposing or frozen and more than 50+ cubs were found frozen because he never used any contraceptions on the animals and would just take cubs when they were born and get rid of them.)
It was good to see this place running as it is and doing well. They are currently in the process of extending their pens and visitor areas with another 400 acres of land purchased.
From there we found our way into Dallas for the night and to our hotel. Boys very excited - it has an indoor pool (apparently with pretty lights at night) and there are 2 day old ducklings out in the courtyard which is a bit cute!
Tomorrow hoping to head into the Rockies for a train trip.