Holly Wild Zoo & Lights

Our Oh So Sweet wedding photographer, Jessi Nichols, posted a picture yesterday morning of her smiling as a cow stuck his head in the window beside her. I immediately liked the picture on her Instagram, and then tried to figure out where this place was!!

Stu and I had been saying that it had been too long since we went out for a date, so we decided earlier in the week that Wednesday night would work best. I looked up Hollywild Zoo online and found out that they do Christmas lights and a trip in the Deer Forest where you can feed animals like deer, cows, zebras, lamas, and even a Zonkey! (Zebra + Donkey) I told Stu a while back jokingly that I wanted to go on a safari on our honeymoon and he said there is no way we are going to Africa. Well I had no idea there was something like this just right up the road from us in Spartanburg.

I have never heard of anything like this so I assumed that there wouldn't be very many people there. I was SO wrong! We got there right at 7pm and there was a line down the road before you even got into the 100 acres of land that were decorated for Christmas. Once we finally made out way in the single car line through the lights, we were followed by a family who failed to follow the rules and turn off their head lights :( We followed the trail around some winding roads and then finally came up to the sign that split the traffic: Deer Forest one way, Santa's Village the other. We were given a bag of bread as we entered the Deer Forest to feed the animals. As we entered the gates we were greeted by about 100 other cars. There was no structure to how you could get close to the animals, so people were driving around like maniacs to get close to some of them. We were just sitting parked at one point trying to get close to some deer, when a giant cow came up to Stu's window. There were multiple cows, who seemed to flock to either church buses full of kids, or pick up trucks full of people in the back.

 We threw most of our bread out to some deer and ended up having a cow come eat some out of the window at one point. I of course, always have my camera handy and I forgot it at home, so we were forced to use our cell phone cameras. We weren't able to get a clear picture of my newly found friend eating out of hands though. The Zebra and Zonkey were followed around by lines of cars and people hanging out their windows to feed them. There were also some water buffalos wandering around, but they were not interested in the bread people had to offer. It just seemed like they were used to the cars, so they would just stroll right in front of it without a doubt.
 
Overall, I think we would go back next year just to see if we could get close to the animals again. Jessi told us the secret is to have dog food instead of bread since they are fed that nasty bread all day.

 

Of course we had to end our  night with some dinner! Longhorns is pretty close to our house, so we ended up finally getting back at 9pm! And who would a girl be if she didn't take a picture of her food :)