When the idea of the Olympic Game Farm came up, I was all in (plus they needed my car/driving skills). It's a drive through and walking farm (zoo?) where the animals come right up to your car. You can feed them, pet them, wave at the bears and they might wave back. So...it sounded amazing. If you read the Yelp reviews, you can see that some people are really unhappy about the living conditions of the animals there. I wasn't sure what to expect, but after being there, I can see what they are talking about. I wasn't sure if some animals were just old or just sad. It was still a crazy experience, though, and the background of it was interesting.
From Seattle, it's about an hour and a half to two hour drive. I was up early (the moon was still out!) and at their place by 6am to pick up a car full and catch the ferry before morning rush hour. We got to the game farm just at opening time.
A bit of back story (you can probably just go to their website if you want the real truth). The Olympic Game Farm used to work with Disney on movies and television shows that used animals, so the trained animals lived at the farm, and footage was sometimes shot there. We visited the farm where they still have a few sets (they don't move any of it- they just clean around everything!). They have some memorabilia around to check out to learn about it. But really, the animals are the reason you go.
(Now that I'm a "local", I know that this town is pronounced SQUIM, not SEE-Quim, which is phonetically how a teacher would say it)
We actually did the driving animal tour first- you actually drive through the animals. And in some cases, I do mean THROUGH the animals.
The peacocks are just a love of mine. I'm pretty sure peacocks and flamingos are my spirit animals.
So of course we bought the loaf of wheat bread for $2 because you can feed the animals as you go along, and who doesn't want to do that?!?
When I say you drive through them, I mean they aren't in cages or anything. You follow a path through their enclosure. They come right up to you and eat our of your hand and they know you're coming so they all run at you. Plus we went in the morning and no one had gone through yet so they were hungry. At first it's like oh cool all these animals up close...
And pretty soon you have animals in your car.
The llamas were especially friendly...and hungry.
The yaks could have cared less that we were there (thankfully, I may have freaked out with a yak in my car- I was already a bundle of nerves!).
Then you get to one of my favorite parts- the bears. They might be old (I'm not sure) but they were such teddy bears! Giant creatures, but so adorable. Some of them looked a little sad. They are behind a fence, and do not come up to your car.
Just hanging out waiting for some bread! When you throw bread or wave to them, they wave back! One of them caught the bread and then did a Ta-Da! for one of the other cars (we didn't get to see it).
That guy! Awwww! We saw a lot of bears and I loved them all. It helped that I wasn't concerned about them attacking me or my car.
Then we made a turn and suddenly, to the pure delight of my car mates, I became the most terrified driver. We were told not to stop the car or feed the animals when we got to the elk or bison because they will rub up against your car and they have antlers, etc. Plus they are HUGE. What they don't tell you is that they will ALL walk in a giant herd toward you and surround you, so good luck with that. The minute we drove in, they came straight for us. They know you have food, so they want in your car. I didn't want to hit them, but you have to keep driving, and they don't move out of the way, but I want/need to speed up, but not too fast because then we miss them or I anger them. It was all around terrifying and I was close to tears (laughing, too, so it was a weird range of emotions) and afraid my car wouldn't make it out. Everyone else thought it was awesome.
I was just face to face with this. Moving toward my open window.
Once we got through and I tried to breathe again, I looked back the last car in the family driving through. So happy to be out of there. There was an extra loop we could do to go back through, but too bad for my car, there was NO WAY I was going through that again!
After I got out (alive) with my car in tact (thankfully), we took the walking tour, which was way less stressful for me. I liked this turkey because he kept puffing up and ruffling his feathers as he strutted around.
Ducks aren't scary.
And I got to see my lovely peacocks again.
Ok, so even though it was completely terrifying and I almost had a full heart attack, this was pretty cool and I would do it again (although if I didn't have to drive, I would totally take someone else up on that!). But also, if I never did it again, that would be ok, too.
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