"It's a train. It's a train." This is one of Bobby's new mantra's. He says it daily and it means, "I want you to take me to the mall so that I can ride the train." If I would take him, he would ride this kiddie train every day. There is one huge problem with this plan, there is not always a conductor on duty giving train rides.
We decided that it was time to take Bobby on a real train ride. Luckily there are quite a few options in our home state of West Virginia. I figured that he would probably like an open air train the best, and I found the perfect option in Durbin, WV. The fall foliage is almost at peak color in this part of the mountains and the weather forecast for the weekend was perfect, so on Friday I called and got our tickets for Sunday.
We didn't tell Bobby where we were going. We stopped and picked up Grandma Carolyn and off we went. Bobby knows every road that he has previously traveled and he gets excited when we turn on to an undiscovered direction.
When we pulled up to the train depot, Bobby was super excited. He got right out and was ready to go. First we had to walk across the street and get out tickets at a little store.
We had 15 minutes to wait until we could board the train. Plenty of time for me to give in to my obsession....taking pictures of Bobby!!!
Bobby immediately picked out which train car that he wanted to ride in, the yellow one....aka, "school bus."
Waiting is NO fun!!!
Handed off the camera to Grandma, so I made it into a picture!!!
Taking his place to be first in line to get onto the train......
ALL ABOARD!!!! The most beautiful words of the day!
Not sure how many times I got out a plastic bag because I was worried that Bobby had motion sickness and was going to vomit because he kept this position throughout most of the ride with this look on his face. Never got sick and once we were finally home, he was bouncing around the house like he had just had the best day of his life. So, this must have been his Zen position!!
The fall foliage was beautiful and made this ride even better!!! Just wish that the sky would have been bright blue instead of overcast....oh well, you can't have everything!!
The train made a stop and all of the passengers could get off and walk around. Well Mr. Bobby who had been watching a creek for most of the ride was up and out of his seat like the Flash. He grabbed hold of Daddy's hand to take him down into the creek bed, which was super dry from the lack of rain over the past couple of weeks. Bobby took his shoes off and was getting in!! He wanted nothing more than to sit down in the water and play. If there wouldn't have been other kids on this train ride we would have probably let him, I had a change of clothes for him, but I'm sure that the other moms would have HATED us!! "Why can't we go swimming, that boy is!!" So, no "swimming" for Bobby. He complied pretty well.
A Daddy photobomb!!!!!
I walked back with Grandma Carolyn while Bobby and Daddy went ahead. When we got back to the train I couldn't find the boys. Bobby wanted to walk around the train and found out that the solid red train car had an "upstairs." He enjoyed climbing the ladder, sitting up high and looking out the window.
Finally we went back to our seats and the train was heading back. Not long into the second part of our trip the train once again stopped, this time to get some water from the creek for the steam engine. We went out to the open top car to watch the process.
They put a hose over into the creek and pumped water up into the engine tank. Then this poor guy had to get up and shovel coal into the engine.
Bobby wanted to get back into the creek and tried to get Daddy to open the gate for him.
Time to walk back to our seats.....
When we pulled back up to the sweet little town of Durbin, I had to snap a few more pictures.
It was a lovely day and I'm sure that we will have more train ride adventures in our future!!!
