Saturday Spent in Sodor!

Robert and I both have our fair shares of hobbies, and we've both - to a degree - been able to indulge our hobbies while we've been here: me with my ballet, art and Snoopy love and Robert with his Magic (card game) playing (although he hasn't managed to play as much as he would have liked!). Mr Toddler is also taking after the both of us in that he becomes *slightly* obsessed and focused on things he enjoys/loves. He has a general love of cars and trains, but at the moment, it's specifically Thomas and Friends. I'm not sure whether it's just him or most kids, but he is so one-track minded when he finds something he loves. At the moment it's like he's running on Thomas-vision. He's obsessed. So I was a bit excited when I found out that Roaring Camp Railroads were running a Day Out with Thomas for a few weekends in July and the beginning of August. I booked tickets pretty quickly after hearing about it, and our day was yesterday. No wonder you needed to book: the place was really busy!

Firstly, I will say that I don't think events like this ever would have happened in Sydney. I felt like this was something I would have seen or heard about from Sydney and thought 'dang, I wish they'd bring that here'. And when I realised the place is only about a 90 minute drive from SF, I felt even luckier. (It's amazing how excited I get when I find things that I know my child will like. LOL!)

The place itself is pretty quaint. It's situated in a redwood forest, not dissimilar from Muir Woods and is set up like a small western town from the 1800s. There was even a blacksmith there showing people how things are made by hand. But for this occasion, the entire place was decked out in Thomas paraphernalia, and although I'll be the first to admit that I'm a complete sucker for things like this if it means a smile on my child's face, most of it was a big advertisement for the toys. That said, they did have various activities, and maybe I'm just slightly cynical because my child's currently too young to do things like go on a jumping castle or wouldn't be interested in having his face painted. 

The train ride itself was nice for adults just as much as kids. Despite the Thomas music playing on each carriage, the ride was through forestry and nice scenery. But unless you were right up the front, you didn't really know that you were riding Thomas as the train itself was quite large. But it was amusing to see a life size Thomas train. It's amazing how big the franchise must be to have things like that made! The one unfortunate thing (and this is no one's fault... I guess? LOL...) is that Mr Toddler is perhaps a bit young to have realised we were riding a Thomas train! He saw the train before we got on, he also saw the general steam trains that live there, and I'm not sure he recognised them as the real versions of his toys! It was almost like he got a bit intimidated at the realisation that "choo-choos" are really these huge machines that are much, much larger than his little toys!!! By the time we got off the ride, he was going around saying "choo-choo, choo-choo" as if he hadn't noticed we'd just been on one! 

And despite the fact that tickets for this ride weren't cheap (or perhaps I'm just a cheapskate!), the things he enjoyed the most were the shop (they must make a mint!) and the track tables that were set up outside. There were about six little tables set up with wooden tracks that kids could play on. Mr Toddler is currently addicted to these things (so much so that he's getting his own for his birthday next month!) and he was playing on them for a good hour yesterday before I had to pull him away. I'm sure he would have stayed longer if we'd just left him! It's always great to see how much fun he gets from something (despite some crazy grandparents and parents that are often around. It's amazing what some people will do as parents or grandparents...). And as I said, he loved the shop. So needless to say, he didn't walk out empty-handed...!

I was really glad we went. I'm even considering taking him back there for his birthday which is next month, just for the general trains and train rides (Thomas or no). The steam trains that they have there are really quaint, and we've seen quite a few of them around. Just something else that I think Sydney could do with! Or maybe I'm often just amazed at how there doesn't seem to be much that this country doesn't have.

But as usual, here are some pics. I haven't done too well with the picture taking lately, but I hope you get the idea from these!

xoxo

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a great picture of Thomas without a lot of other people in it. I was lucky to get this: you weren't really supposed to get right up to the train unless you were having a professional family picture taken. I got a bit sneaky and snuck in to get a close pic! LOL...

A traditional steam train that kids can climb into and check out.

Pretty sure my Dad would love these trains!

A crappy picture of some forestry from our ride!

He didn't leave empty handed. We got him the event-specific souvenir train, because according to Robert: "everything else here can be bought cheaper on Amazon". >_<

Reminded me of Narnia. Without the snow. LOL.

Muir Woods

I do apologise: the updating of this blog is somewhat sporadic these days! I was trying to give weekly updates, but that hasn't been happening as I've run out of time or, well... that's about it: I've run out of time! Or we just haven't done anything interesting.

But this past weekend was Father's Day here. Robert wanted to go to Muir Woods which is our closest forest of redwood trees (it's about a 60-90 minute drive one way, depending on traffic). These forests are some of the oldest in the world, and some of the trees here are around 1000 years old! The place was really beautiful, and for me, it was nice to wander around in nature without having to be too afraid of spiders! Haha. The drive was a little scary: the road we took was very windy and some parts were on the edge of cliffs. I was often yelling out to Robert to drive slower or to move further into the road in fear of driving off the edge! Ha...

After wandering around the forest for a couple of hours, we headed to Stinton Beach for lunch. I'd been looking forward to finding a beach as it's now Summer here, and it would be nice to take the toddler swimming. And coming from Australia, I had expectations of spending much of Summer at a beach. But I don't think that will be quite so. Stinton Beach, at least, was a big surf. Which is fine. It's just not as child-friendly as perhaps a Sydney beach is. It was also very open and big. Like everything here, it was bigger than beaches tend to be in Sydney. And according to someone Robert spoke to, people tend not to go swimming as much as the water's so cold. And I'm not going to lie: it just wasn't as picturesque and as beautiful as Sydney beaches are. The sand's a bit grey and the water doesn't seem to have that sparkle that I'm used to. It's also quite a drive, where I'm used to living about 15 minutes away from Balmoral. Oh well...

That said, it was a lovely day. Here are some pictures:

Following on from that, on Sunday we went to Lands End, but I haven't finished going through the photos of that little trip, so I'll save that for another post.

In other news, our stuff finally arrived!!! It only took four months! Haha. Although our lounge has been lost. As far as we know, it could still be on the boat. But it's good to have all of our stuff and our apartment is starting to look more like us now. It's been very exciting for the toddler: as far as he's aware, we've suddenly been gifted with all these new things! 

Anyway, I will updated again soon with some photos from Lands End and another beach. 

xoxo