Tonight I took a carriage ride through the Tilles Park Winter Wonderland in St. Louis to check out the Christmas lights. I've heard about this before, but never made the time to do it. They offer carriage rides or you can just drive your car through at your leisure. I opted for the carriage ride (since I've never done that), so I could get two new things for the price of one. :)
I went with my friends Betsy, Natalie, Natalie's husband Aaron, and their daughter Maddie. Betsy has seen the lights before, but never taken the carriage. Natalie and Aaron have been to the park many times. In fact, Aaron proposed under the Tunnel of Lights. So, a trip to the park was very fitting, since they just celebrated their anniversary over the weekend.
The park offers many different sizes of carriages, from small intimate 4 person private carriages, large 10 person private carriages, or the granddaddy 26 person group carriages. The open group carriages are a mixture of different people...unless you have a group of 26 friends who would all want to go together. I couldn't even find 9 other people wanting to go, so I can't imagine finding 25!!
I went with my friends Betsy, Natalie, Natalie's husband Aaron, and their daughter Maddie. Betsy has seen the lights before, but never taken the carriage. Natalie and Aaron have been to the park many times. In fact, Aaron proposed under the Tunnel of Lights. So, a trip to the park was very fitting, since they just celebrated their anniversary over the weekend.
The park offers many different sizes of carriages, from small intimate 4 person private carriages, large 10 person private carriages, or the granddaddy 26 person group carriages. The open group carriages are a mixture of different people...unless you have a group of 26 friends who would all want to go together. I couldn't even find 9 other people wanting to go, so I can't imagine finding 25!!
Our carriage.
The weather this morning was a balmy 56 degrees, but by the time we went on our ride at 6:30, it was probably in the upper 20s to low 30s. So, since it was a tiddly bit nippy out, I looked like the abominable snowman. I had on a long-sleeve t-shirt, a turtleneck, a hooded sweatshirt, my wool coat, a scarf, a stocking hat, jeans, wool knee-length socks and my new insulated faux Ugg boots (totally a Target knockoff). It was very difficult to move in all these layers, but wouldn't you know it, I was still cold. The carriage drivers left the roof on the carriages, to keep some of the precipitation out. It had stopped raining, but there was a lot of moisture dropping from the trees. But, that didn't stop the breeze from coming in the open sides of the carriage. We brought our own blankets, but the carriage came with two, so we didn't need ours. Unfortunately, there's only so much tucking you can do to try to keep the draft from going right up your legs. Betsy and I stopped for hot cocoa and hot caramel apple cider and that helped warm us up a bit as well.
The weather this morning was a balmy 56 degrees, but by the time we went on our ride at 6:30, it was probably in the upper 20s to low 30s. So, since it was a tiddly bit nippy out, I looked like the abominable snowman. I had on a long-sleeve t-shirt, a turtleneck, a hooded sweatshirt, my wool coat, a scarf, a stocking hat, jeans, wool knee-length socks and my new insulated faux Ugg boots (totally a Target knockoff). It was very difficult to move in all these layers, but wouldn't you know it, I was still cold. The carriage drivers left the roof on the carriages, to keep some of the precipitation out. It had stopped raining, but there was a lot of moisture dropping from the trees. But, that didn't stop the breeze from coming in the open sides of the carriage. We brought our own blankets, but the carriage came with two, so we didn't need ours. Unfortunately, there's only so much tucking you can do to try to keep the draft from going right up your legs. Betsy and I stopped for hot cocoa and hot caramel apple cider and that helped warm us up a bit as well.
Here's some nice product placement for Starbucks...
The Mednik family....don't worry, Maddie was way more excited than she looked! (Sorry Natalie for cutting off the rest of your face! ;-)
After we all piled in the carriage, Bonnie, our driver, took off with Gordy the horse in the lead. It's a slow, fairly smooth ride, which was nice. The entire trip took around 20 minutes. The downside of the carriage ride is that you can't stop and look at any of the lights like you could if you were driving. So, we all looked like prairie dogs with our heads bopping back and forth looking out each side and front and back. There's so much to look at!
Let me put this in perspective to you. The park uses over 1 million lights each year to decorate. Yes, you heard me right, one MILLION lights. (That's meant to be said with your best Dr. Evil voice...lol) If they stretched out all the lights end to end, they would reach from St. Louis down to the southern tip of Missouri. That's a whole lotta lights. They also use over 20 miles of extension cords to wire everything up. Can you imagine what the electric bill must be for this?! Bonnie also told us that each year there are certain things that stay they same, but they also change things up depending on the committee. They use volunteers and County Parks employees and start putting up the lights and decorating in October. The tours don't start until Thanksgiving weekend and last until a few days after New Year's. Also, when it's time to take down the lights, they have to cut the strands out of the trees, throw them away and get new ones the next year. It's just too difficult to get them out of the trees without tangling them. I hope they recycle! The freestanding displays are fortunately able to be reused each year. Which is good, since those are the most expensive.
Let me put this in perspective to you. The park uses over 1 million lights each year to decorate. Yes, you heard me right, one MILLION lights. (That's meant to be said with your best Dr. Evil voice...lol) If they stretched out all the lights end to end, they would reach from St. Louis down to the southern tip of Missouri. That's a whole lotta lights. They also use over 20 miles of extension cords to wire everything up. Can you imagine what the electric bill must be for this?! Bonnie also told us that each year there are certain things that stay they same, but they also change things up depending on the committee. They use volunteers and County Parks employees and start putting up the lights and decorating in October. The tours don't start until Thanksgiving weekend and last until a few days after New Year's. Also, when it's time to take down the lights, they have to cut the strands out of the trees, throw them away and get new ones the next year. It's just too difficult to get them out of the trees without tangling them. I hope they recycle! The freestanding displays are fortunately able to be reused each year. Which is good, since those are the most expensive.
Here's the tunnel of lights. Unfortunately, the rest of the pics didn't turn out very well. Between the jostling of the carriage, the cold fogging up my lense and not being able to be still to take the photos, all my pics are kind of a blurry mess of colors. :( Oh well. I'll try to see if Aaron got any good photos, or maybe I can find some on the web. In the meantime, you'll have to take my word for all the lights!
The twenty minutes goes by really fast, especially when I was trying to take pictures and look at everything at once. I also couldn't help looking at Maddie most of the time and seeing the wonder on her cute little face. She was having a great time and kept craning her neck to see the horse's head just visible at the front of the carriage. She was also boppin' around like she had ants in her pants. We decided if she wasn't just dancing, she may have been either doing the pee pee dance or trying to stay warm. :)
It was a lot of fun, and would make a great Christmas tradition each year. I would like to drive it some time so I can really look at all the different displays.
Thanks to Betsy, Natalie, Aaron and Maddie for going with me!!
1 comment:
I LOVE Christmas! This sounds so awesome. We've never been to Tilles, but one year we checked out the Jellystone Park out at Eureka. No carriage rides, but still pretty cool. Lots better than the light display around here.
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