05/16/2026
Garlyn Zoo Wildlife Park 🦁🐯🐻
Right off of Highway 2. Plan to spend an hour or two when you visit!
🦬🐅 Along a quiet stretch of U.S.-2 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, there’s a roadside stop that started with a simple idea: a couple, a piece of land, and the animals they already had as pets.
What began with pygmy goats, potbellied pigs, pheasants, peacocks, and sika deer slowly grew into something much bigger. Today, visitors wandering the cedar-mulched trails might spot grizzly bears, wolves, cougars, African lions, a Siberian tiger, river otters, reindeer, lemurs, yaks, and even alligators — all tucked into a quiet Northwoods setting. 🌲
The park sits on 30 acres at the very top of Lake Michigan, surrounded by thousands of acres of state and federal forest. Many of the animals here were rescued or donated, and the entire place was built largely by hand, blending into the natural pine, birch, and maple woods.
The backstory is just as wild as the animals. When the owners first moved north to start the park, they lived in an unfinished garage for six years while building enclosures and the gift shop — even selling their pickup truck to make it through the second winter.
More than 30 years later, visitors still stroll shaded forest paths, spending an hour or two getting surprisingly close to animals from around the world… all in the middle of the U.P.
