Cool Trains

The other day, Ron and I visited with friends John and Carol who are staying at a nearby RV park for the winter.  They are always a lot of fun and we enjoyed shopping and having lunch with them.  The park has a weekly Country Store which brings in vendors and lots of shoppers.  Ron got a really nice belt and the guy sized it for him right there.  I was the big spender and replaced my worn and fraying bicycle seat with a brand new one.  I've tried many seats that were supposed to be comfortable, but I can testify that the Cloud 9 seat really is.

Their park also has a train layout that I wanted to see.  It is truly amazing with large cars (about 12" long) like the ones my father set up when we were little.  I thought the cars were even bigger than these, but I guess that's because I was so little.

The park residents handcraft all the buildings which are works of art.

I especially liked the roundhouse.

And the steam engine.  When I took this picture, I didn't notice the tree that fell on the building in the background.  How clever.

There was even a Santa train.  Isn't that the Travelocity gnome standing on top of the caboose?

As John pointed out, everything doesn't always run smoothly.  It looks like there was a derailment on the other side of the trestle bridge.

But the most fun was just visiting and reliving their trip to Alaska last summer.  Although Carol did a great job documenting it in their blog, nothing beats hearing about it in person.  Ron has already done the Alaska trip, but I never have.  We're talking about it for 2014, but haven't decided on the method since we don't want to drive all that way.  We'll see.  I envision some version of plane, train, and automobile, with maybe a boat thrown in.