Adirondack Animal Land

Eighty acres of foothills farmland on Route 30 in Vails Mills, given over since 1993 to the keeping of more than five hundred animals — among them camels, zebras, giraffes, kangaroos, monkeys, llamas, alligators, aoudads, and a regularly rotating cast besides. Family-owned and operated by the Eglin family across two seasons: a long summer run, and a shorter, lit-up turn at Christmas. Summer admission is single but the park is two: a walk-thru of paddocks and exhibits, and a drive-thru you take in your own vehicle, windows up or down at your discretion. Both are included in one ticket; grain cups are sold on-site if you'd like to feed as you go. The drive-thru is a drive-thru in earnest — animals approach, lean in, occasionally make contact with the car. Management offers no warranty on paint or trim, and the matter-of-factness with which they say so is half the charm. What you will not find here is the curated remove of a modern accredited zoo. What you will find is something rarer in 2026: a family roadside park in the older Adirondack tradition — the kind that made a generation's first memory of a camel up close, or a giraffe at arm's length, and is still doing the work, in the foothills, between the Sacandaga and the Mohawk. § Christmas at Animal Land In late November the gates re-open for the holidays. The same drive-thru that ferries you past zebras in July becomes a corridor of lights — thousands of them — synchronized to a Christmas radio broadcast you tune to from inside the car. The walk-thru side hosts a live nativity, a working glass blower, a visit with Santa, and the resident reindeer, camels, and sheep brought in from the barns for the occasion. Thursday through Saturday evenings, late November through the week before Christmas.