Smith Mountain Lake Farm Alpacas — Attraction in Virginia

I have been wanting to take a tour on this Smith Mountain Lake Alpaca Farm for a while now and was so excited to finally experience this unique opportunity. Before I get into the reason I rated this review the way I did, I would just like to say that I did enjoy my experience with the alpacas. They were so adorable! Our tour guide was very sweet, but most of the tour seemed like a long sales pitch. First it was buying an alpaca, then it was buying his $200 alpaca pillow. Then he went on to claim the chemicals in factory pillows causes autism in children, labeling autism as a "disease". He told us that women's breastmilk gets infected from these chemicals, explaining autism can be avoided by the purchase of his pillow. As a young woman with autism I can tell you for certainty these claims are untrue, supported by absolutely no research or evidence. All of this was part of his sales pitch for his wife's "award winning alpaca pillow". After about 30 minutes of feeling disgusted and appalled while he made these claims, he asked if we knew anyone with autism. I sat there silently before my friend bumped my shoulder and I said something. He sat there shocked, not knowing he had just said all this to someone with autism. He tried to cover for himself and said he "would've never guessed I had autism" and that I "must be a really smart kid who's good in school" because I'm on the spectrum. He continued to make more false claims, explaining I may be interested in some experimental procedure to cure my autism with alpaca proteins. He said this protein could cure autism, alzheimers, and cancer. Again, none of these claims were supported by any sort of evidence. I researched all of this as soon as I got home and none of it was supported up by any research. While the alpacas are cute, I would not recommend this tour. It disgusts me that this farm attracts thousands of people every year who would hear these false claims. It is because of people like our tour guide that our society believes people with autism are "diseased", when in reality we were born this way and our minds simply just function...

If you want to see some Alpacas, stop by the fence and check them out for free in the afternoon when this place is closed. If you like looking at Alpacas from an even greater distance while listening to a guy with no mask during a pandemic talk right wing nonsense, bad tax advice and random facts and stories about Alpacas, and you also don't have kids, then go on the paid "tour" of the area you can see from the road for free.

All three of the families with kids left in the middle of the talk (or "tour"). It's painful for adults to sit around a guy talking in a field with Alpacas in the distance for like 30 minutes. With kids, forget about it.

The guy had no mask on and was talking loudly about 3 feet away from people, who were explicitly instructed to pack in close together and told multiple times that they didn't have to wear a mask. Then he bent down to talk in the faces of multiple kids who aren't old enough to wear masks. I had covid earlier this year and almost died, so I hate to see people being so stupid.

Speaking of stupid, he spent a lot of time talking about Alpacas being a tax break. Buying livestock of any kind, like literally every other business expense, is a tax deduction. So Alpacas are a tax deduction in the same way that pens or paper or chairs are a tax deduction. They're expenses, so you need to subtract them from revenue to determine how much profit you've made that year.

I could go on about the dozens of fallacies in his rambling talk-tour, but I think you get the point. Alpacas are cool. This tour...

First off….my 80 year old mom with dementia visited the farm with me. She was made to feel special and is still talking about how much fun she had tonight! Both owners made sure she was comfortable and felt included. Not being from the area I didn’t know what to expect. I figured it would be like a petting type zoo. It’s not. There is a presentation/lecture first. This could be shortened but it does have a lot of information. I think that could be optional when you are making your reservation. Moms with small kids or people like me with elderly parents could skip a lot of that since those with us don’t understand all the info being shared. Now the portions concerning the daily living (ie: pregnancy, life expectancy etc ) was more interesting. We did get to feed the alpacas but this wasn’t very long. We were discouraged from petting them at this point. We then moved to a pen and stood in line to get a photo made with one of the animals. This was fun but felt rushed. The owners were very sweet though and offered to take photos if you didn’t want a selfie. The price is $10 cash only so that’s not too bad. The only complaint or suggestion I have is more time getting to interact close up with the animals. And a little less about the full history, tax implications of ownership, etc. Younger kids and elderly people aren’t too interested. But again, the gentleman doing the presentation was extremely kind, funny and made everyone feel like they were important. Here are some photos we took. My...