Thinking of St. Nick brings me to a couple of my Cotton Candy parks, winds me down the road to their entrances, and lets me recall their gingerbread goodness - even though some were visited in the deep, dark Summer.
Santa's North Pole Workshop, right at the foot of Pike's Peak in Colorado, is the quintessential Christmas park year 'round, 24/7, through and through...
And nowhere else, as far as I know, can one ride an actual reindeer-go-'round! That's me and Rudolph.
You can sidle up to the actual North Pole...
And then there's the candy cane slide, the same one I slid down as a pipsqueak back in the late 60s...
still thrilling taller pipsqueaks in the present day.
More recently, Ben and I had the immense pleasure of visiting Storybook Land in Egg Harbor County, NJ. This versatile playground of a park includes fairytale scenes, rides and a sugar plum fairyland of a Christmas section. I also learned they have a holiday festival complete with the jolly old elf, reindeer, and thousands of twinkling lights. But on this sweltering August day...
Wwwhat? Another North Pole? Will the real North Pole please stand up... oh, wait. You ARE standing...
Like the Queen of England, I'm inspecting the troops.
But what delighted me the most was the display of holiday animated characters. Could these little snowbabies be the same ones who adorned the Marshall Fields windows back in the day?
Back home, Santa's Village has been resurrected as Santa's Village Azoosment Park; the classic structures still stand.
Check in with my post tomorrow and perhaps Santa will leave a few images you haven't seen since you were a tot, ready to pull apart your Christmas stocking with glee.
