day out with thomas

Thomas the Tank Engine takes time out from his busy schedule as a Very Useful Engine on the Island of Sodor in order to travel around the United States and pull wagons full of adoring fans at various steam train sites. We are lucky enough to live near his annual visiting spot in the Santa Cruz mountains.

We surprised Jonah on Friday morning with the souvenirs (a “special offer” when buying tickets online — because we couldn’t resist the souvenir hat, whistle, and medallion). He ran around like crazy with them all on at once:

Jonah did well on the 1-1/2 hour drive.  Thank goodness. (We listened to Jonah’s latest favorite cassette, the original soundtrack to “Camelot,” and then a Thomas-books-on-CD.)

The Day Out was amazing. Not for any one thing exactly, but just to have a whole event devoted to the worship of all things Thomas. We were among our tribe, and it was good.

Here is Jonah as he first spied the giant blow-up Percy:

…and upon closer inspection:

Next we lined up with all the other devotees to have our picture taken with Thomas. There’s a group photo of the three of us, which we have to order:

And Scott took this one:

Next we boarded our wagon and Thomas took us for a ride through the woods:

You can see him way up there at the front. Round the curve, the driver leaned out and waved back at us. Very exciting!

After the ride, there was BBQ lunch, then some playing with giant bubble wands, then the observing but not entering of trains-with-faces jumpy houses, the battling with other toddlers over the few trains at the many train tables, the daring journey through the all-things-Thomas store (we ended up with two “pullback racer” trains, a set of temporary tattoos, and a sippy cup), and the line up for a meeting with Sir Topham Hatt.

When we got around the partition, I fully expected a bald, round-ish human in a top hat, but like the big Thomas pulling the wagons, STH was also BIG. REALLY BIG. Okay, the person inside the costume was probably normal adult size. But that HEAD. Those HANDS. Those SHOES. Jonah was duly afraid of him, so we had to take the picture of the big man alone, rather than with kid:

And, of course, Jonah fell asleep in the car on the way back. Wouldn’t you?