Photos By Shawn and Malia Weigelt
February 15, 2010
Olympic Game Farm, Sequim, Washington
Okay, here it is, at long last, a collection of our best photos from our experience at the Olympic Game Farm! The Olympic Game Farm is a drive through zoo in Sequim where visitors are able to get up close and personal to a large number of both exotic and North American wildlife. For a small fee you may purchase a loaf of bread to feed most of the animals as you drive through the park. My four year old daughter was especially excited for this part! Even before we started our drive we noticed many wild ravens, gulls, and tons of Bald Eagles, evidently there as the clean up crew! Once we had paid and bought our bread at the gate we started our drive. Roaming free all over the grounds were peacocks, domestic rabbits, and a few varieties of chickens.
The male peacocks are stunning birds!
This one was showing off that characteristic tail!
“Yeah, I know I’m cute.”
As we drove further into the park past peacocks and rabbits we encountered the prairie dog colony. It was really cool to get close to these very social animals.
Impressive dexterity!
Near the prairie dogs were a couple of zebras. We were hoping to be able to feed them some bread but instead they ran off and didn’t even give us a photo opportunity. Continuing on we found several yaks that were more than willing to poke their heads into our cars for some bread! Needless to say, this was the closest any of us had been to a yak. One after another they would come up to us, get a slice of bread, and move on to the cars behind us!
“You know, there’s this great stuff called toothpaste!”
My daughter did a great job feeding yaks!
In the same general vicinity of the yak herd were a few llamas and an impressive White Rhinoceros. The llamas were eating hay and the rhino was keeping a low profile away from the caravan of vehicles.
Llama hick!
After making it through the gauntlet of yaks, we were pleased to find several HUGE Kodiak Bears! Kodiak’s are the largest Brown Bear (Grizzly) and are native to Alaska. All of the bears were behind fences (for which I was very relieved), but we were still able to toss them slices of bread that they quickly gobbled up. When some bread would fall on the ground the bears deftly picked it up with their massive claw equipped paws! There was one very large black bear there as well who I thought had a mean look to him. He just did not seem impressed!
“Do you mind? I’m trying to take a nap here!”
This guy was by far the largest Kodiak Bear at the park. He frequently, “waved,” like this to get a slice of bread as a reward.
Malia thought this bear looked like it was smiling!
This Black Bear just didn’t look like he was enjoying himself.
After spending some time with the bears we moved on to the other predators. The park keeps their lions, tigers, wolves, coyotes, bobcats, and cougars in cages for obvious reasons. We were able to drive up beside the cages and still get pretty good looks at the animals, but because of the cages, decent photos were impossible.
When we had passed all of the predator cages the road wound out into a very large pasture full of Elk, Bison, Fallow Deer and a couple of horses. Of course my daughter was more excited about the horses than anything else.
The Elk were beautiful.
“Hey, same to you buddy!”
I knew that Elk were big animals but they were still larger than I expected them to be. This guy is just a yearling!
Malia described this moment as the grossest part of our visit! This Bison went on to almost completely put his head through her window begging for a piece of bread. Apparently the combination of slobber and stench were too much for her and I continued driving out of compassion for my wife!
Absolutely spectacular animal!
Fallow Deer (an Old World species)
My daughter’s favorite animal of the day was this horse! Good thing we saved some bread!
After the horses we had pretty much finished our drive through the Olympic Game Farm. We had a great trip and the kids absolutely loved it! Once we left the park and got back on the road we found a really cute baby donkey in someones private pasture. Of course Malia had to take a picture so I have included it in this post! Thanks for visiting.
Awwwwwww….
Equipment: Nikon D80 70-300mm VR; Canon Powershot XS10IS
Tags: Field Trip, Weigelt Photos by Shawn Weigelt
No Comments »
