A Day Out with Thomas

We had a choo-chooriffic day today. To mark Gotcha Day 2005 (which was actually Friday) we took the kids (and my mom) to “A Day Out with Thomas.”

The event was held at the Delaware & Ulster Rail Road in Arkville, N.Y., which is in the Catskills.

It took us about 2.5 hours to get there. We printed out directions from Mapquest, which were a little misleading in one spot. That resulted in me taking a wrong turn and going about 25 miles in the opposite direction before we realized we were off track. When we bought our “Day Out with Thomas” tickets we were advised to show up an hour early. Instead we go there 15 minutes early.

But it all worked out. We went straight to the train – which looked just like Thomas the Tank Engine – and climbed aboard. We sat in an old fashioned coach and took a train ride that lasted about 25 minutes.

Afterward we got out and went to take a good close-up look at the Thomas the train. Thomas the boy and his big brother Nolan were blown away to see this character in “real life!”

There were plenty of other things to do there too. There was an area where kids could sit and watch Thomas videos. There was a tent where performers were telling stories and singing songs. A tent called “the Imagination Station” had bunch of tables set up with Thomas toys for kids to play with and arts & crafts projects to do. There were also animals, a hay maze and – of course – a giant souvenir shop. We didn’t escape with buying some new Thomas toys.

The Delaware & Ulster Rail Road also has plenty of its own vintage engines and rail cars to check out.

Sir Topham Hatt (a human character from the Thomas stories for those of you without young children) was also there. Nolan says he saw him from a distance. I missed him and we never got a chance to go see him up close.

They were serving food, but there was no place to sit that wasn’t out in the open, and the skies were starting to look threatening by lunchtime. So we decided to leave and the rain began falling just as we started heading for our car.

We found a nice little diner in town to have lunch in and then headed home.

When we got back, Thomas went down for a nap and Nolan and I went to the library to pick out a new Thomas video. The kids are happily watching their show in the basement right now.