We added one more activity this weekend to our big train adventures. We heard that 2 weekends in December people throughout the valley open up their yards so that the public can go and see the different trains and tracks that they have set up. We had never done this before but we thought that the boys would get a kick out of it. Now I don't know what I was really expecting in my mind, but it definitely wasn't what we saw. I think that I was expecting some little train that they put on a track across their grass, or something like that. OH NO! The train tracks and villages and stuff IS THE BACKYARD! People have painted their fences to be different sceneries, made tunnels, canyons, etc in their backyards and even some front yards. One house even had hidden characters throughout their set-up that you were supposed to find. They had them listed on a paper that Jessica and Jocelyn took around. I don't think that they found 1/2 of the characters on the list. The kids all had a ball...especially the boys. They loved the "choo-choos".
Okay, so now for some pictures. The last house that we went to was most impressive. The house belongs to the owners of a restaurant here in Mesa called Tia Rosas. The house in itself was so impressive, but then you go around the corner and see this huge garage that is opened up and is FULL of trains. I am not kidding, floor to ceiling trains; it was amazing.
You then went through the garage and there was the backyard. The yard was HUGE and it had tracks going throughout the whole thing. To let you know just how big the yard was, my 7 year old girl got lost. There were so many people and it was so big that she couldn't find us. (Yes, she was found.)
He had 5 trains going at one time on different tracks. His little operation was not so little, he had several workers running around all over the place making sure that the trains stayed on their tracks. Some of these pictures are coming from azbigtrains.org because ours didn't turn out that great. As we were wandering through the yard we noticed that he is adding on to the train tracks. It will be fun to see that in the coming year. The last picture must have been taken before he was done with the main section. It is now all done and beautifully landscaped. The website says that he has 3,500 feet of tracks on 4 acres.
The last pictures I got off of the website. We didn't go to these particular houses, but I wanted to show pictures because again, our pictures didn't turn out. I am sure that we will be going back to see the trains next year.
