December 12, 2010

Wild About Hollywild!

Have you ever heard of Hollywild?  It's a wild animal park in Wellford, SC.  I'd never heard of Wellford, even though it's only about 20 miles away from us, but I had heard about Hollywild.  We had never been before but decided to go last night for their Holiday Lights Safari Benefit and we were certainly not disappointed!

There was a line of cars 30 minutes long just to get in the entrance, but we made the best of it by chatting away and singing Christmas carols.  Austin is a big fan of Jingle Bells and Holly Jolly Christmas and knows most of the words to both songs and loves to sing along!  I adore listening to him sing Jingle Bells....mainly because in his version of the song the word "bells" has about 6 syllables.  Seriously, so cute...

So, once we made it in the park, we brought the boys up front with us to sit and cruised around looking at all the lights.  Even more than sitting in the front seat of the car while moving, Austin and Owen loved looking at all the beautiful Christmas scenes and colored lights we encountered as our car crawled through the expansive park.  Owen was in a trance and Austin was about halfway out the window "oooo-ing and ahhh-ing" at everything he saw.





After driving for several minutes we suddenly ended up in a giant field where cars were driving around aimlessly. We were a little confused at first, and then we saw this:




We were driving through a giant field with tons of animals roaming freely and peeking into various cars looking for snacks!  They apparently didn't like the stale bread we had in our car, but we saw one of those giant bulls about halfway inside an SUV right beside us.  The passengers were actually throwing the food outside of the car to try and get the animal to go away after he overstayed his welcome!  So, we chased around a few zebra and a couple bulls and tried to get them to come to our car, but after not much luck, we moved on.

Next up was an area where you could stop and get out of your car, see some of the caged animals up close, feed them from bottles, get snacks, roast marshmallows and see Santa Claus.  Austin tried to feed a goat a bottle, totally loved the camels and got snapped at by a buffalo.  He was also terrified of the 30 year old Santa Claus with black facial hair coming out from under his hat and beard.  Apparently Austin only likes authentic looking Santas.



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We ended our night with a few roasted marshmallows.  Austin, of course, insisted on putting the warm, gooey mess in his mouth by himself, thus becoming totally sticky and covered in marshmallow goo.  That was our cue that it was about time to go home.  That, and the fact that it was 9:30pm.



By the way, we are sooo totally going back on a random weekday evening, right after they open, with a car full of goodies from home to feed the free roaming animals.  I'm not sure why, but we are bound and determined to have a bull or a zebra in our car!!

1 comment:

Amanda said...

Glad you guys got to do that!! We're going Saturday and are pretty stoked about it. Here's a hint though - ditch the bread - take your own carrots and apples :-)

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