Birthday Train Ride!

To start Owen's (real) birthday celebration, we decided to take a quick drive down to Monticello Railway Museum for a train ride!  Even though Owen's first love isn't trains, I thoughts he'd enjoy this and we'd been talking it up for a few weeks.

You drive to a train station a few miles outside of town where the actual museum is located.  There is a little gift shop, train table, and lots of trains to look at.  One large one, you can walk through and look at all kinds of things in an "old fashioned" train.  Pretty neat!

 

of course, his favorite thing is the thing we have at home

going for a wagon "ride"

 

 

We bought our tickets and had some time to look around at all the things.  And then we boarded the train.  There was only one other family riding that day (score!) so we had a whole train car to ourselves.  Owen enjoyed the fact that the conductor actually came around and punched a hole in our tickets.  We rode about 4.5 miles to the other station in downtown Monticello.  It was the perfect length for our kids.  The temperature out was wonderful, but I would not recommend doing the train in the middle of summer.  It would be HOT! 

 

 

At the stop downtown, there are some more things to check out, like a working telegraph machine, lights, and bells to ring.  Of course, there is another train table which Owen didn't want to leave.  We stayed for about 15 minutes and then boarded the train to head back the other way.

 

In general, the kids acted as I thought they would.  Ellie adored the train. She said "choo choo" repeated and bounced up and down.  Owen had to be on one of our laps the whole time. 

 

 

 

After the train, we ate downtown Monticello at the yummy EL Toro there.  All in all, a great afternoon.  Happy early birthday buddy!