Drive Through Safari: Huntsville's Family-Friendly Wild Animals

There's nothing to do! That's the familiar refrain from locals, and after you've been in Huntsville for awhile, and seen the Space and Rocket Center 20 times, you start to believe it. I have lived in Huntsville for more than 20 years, and I certainly did. But recently I discovered a place that has actually been here for most of those 20 years, is a lot of fun, and relatively inexpensive as well.

Harmony Park is an actual drive-through safari, right here in town. It is on the outskirts of the city, very near to New Hope, but is nonetheless in the city limits. It is not a very well-known attraction- the day that I went through the Safari, I was the only one there. But as attractions go, especially in Huntsville, it was quite memorable

The park starts off with a ranger who comes and takes the admission fee of $6 per person, with kids under 3 admitted free. At that time the would-be adventureer is also offered a big bucket of dried corn for $5. This is an excellent investment, as the animals gather around the vehicles looking for the corn.

After getting the rules (no leaving the car, no feeding anything but the corn), we drove into the gates themselves, to begin the two mile route through the park. At first I was terrified of hitting an animal, and drove so slowly that the route could easily have taken hours. But after a few minutes, you get used to the animals' pace. The animals are used to moving vehicles, and they WILL get out of the way of a moving car. As long as you are driving slowly, and there is no need to stop for them unless you want to. But of course you will want to. The number and variety of exotic animals demands stopping to look at them, even pet them through the car window.

The park is a federally-licensed nature preserve, and most of the animlas are free ranging. There are many, many emus, a couple of gigantic ostriches, a camel, rams, pigs, waterfowl, a bison, ponies, goats, longhorns, a zebra, and alligators. The alligators are not free range, as you might guess, but are housed in several large enclosures throughout the park.

We were absolutely stunned at how close the animals came to us, the zebra actually licked my window, and how intently they sought the dried feed from us. The emus put their heads right through the open windows and tried to help themselves to the corn when we weren't fast enough. We learned through trial and error to keep the windows down only far enough to throw out the corn, as the kamikaze emus are extremely fast and can and do nip at people. The other animals are quite insistant at being fed, but most are not tall enough to try to get it themselves. The rams demand feed by butting vehicles with their horns, so beware the approaching rams. But even those dangers do not damper the fun, and perhaps even add to it.

At the end of the safari, you are told that you can go again- for free. You can do this as many times as you wish after you have paid that first admission. We of course went again, but this time bought much more corn.