Come on Ride the Train...or Not

Most exciting part of this post is right here:



Oh Alamogordo. You're letting me down. So far the best things here have been the thrift stores. They are awesome. But that isn't exactly a "family activity." It could be, but apparently digging through other peoples' cast off belongings is not Troy's thing. And apparently he speaks for Avery too. Womp womp :(

We attempted yet another activity here. And it was a HUGE let down. We went to the Toy Train Depot. This was Troy's response when we got in the car and he shut his door (so no one would hear and we didn't hurt anyone's feelings), "well, I guess we just did our good deed for the day." Allow me to explain.

Here is the sign. We were SUPER optimistic about this place. I mean, there was a running train offering kids rides outside! How bad could this be? Avery is going to LOVE it!

It was $4 per person. We didn't have to pay for Avery. Apparently she's not a person. Thank God. She didn't appreciate $4 worth for an entry fee :) That was a win. We paid and the money taking lady was all "do you guys want the tour?" We were all AWESOME! A tour! The guy comes out to give us our tour. A ONE ON ONE TOUR?? YES!

No. He walked in and led us into the first room. He sat down on a bench that was shaped like a train. And stared at us. All like "so uh, ya got any questions?" Except he didn't talk for like 2 minutes. It was a stare down. Finally Troy was like "so um, what's these pictures of?" I guess Troy was hoping that if he sounded dumb, the dude would just start his schpeal and we could listen. Well it worked.

Except for the fact that the guy started NOT talking about the museum. He was talking about everything but the tour he was supposed to be giving. I'm not joking. So awkward. So instead of telling you about the museum and the history of the trains, here are some pictures of the stuff and some of us walking around in the museum. Sprinkled with weirdness of the dude's ramblings.

Troy and Avery watching the trains on the tracks. They had some from like 1902. I was kind of impressed by that. There were entire rooms of different toy trains and all the tracks.

There were entire rooms of this. This particular room took 8 people 2 years to build. Seriously?

There was a train in there called the roadrunner (the New Mexico state bird) and they had written to Warner Brothers to ask for permission to use the Coyote (from the cartoon who keeps "almost" dying and never actually catching the roadrunner) as the caboose. They never heard back from WB and decided "eh, they must not care enough to write us back so we are going to go for it."

There were probably 6 full walls of toy trains behind plexi glass in this place.

Our "guide" basically flipped switches and turned on different trains the whole time. Like an hour worth of flip turning and random stories. Like when a guy came in and broke one of the train operating turn table things that switches the track that it runs on. He turned it by hand instead of letting the guide do it electronically. And then the guy refused to pay the $100 for a new part and so the "guide" had to forcefully remove him from the museum in a not so nice way. I was like, "Oh so you're actually a bouncer! Not a tour guide. It makes sense why this tour is less than sub-par."

Avery banging on the doors. She was excited about getting put on the ground. She is walking more and more and wants to be put down to explore. Nightmare on wheels right there. You are also getting a smashing view of her curly mullet. My little cherub :)

They had this other train set up that wasn't as big as the others. It had a sense of humor though. They had made a King Kong scene. The train running around the track was carrying bananas. RUNT BANANAS! Avery signed banana for the first time!! Her signing banana was definitely the most exciting part of the museum trip. How sad. Anyway. It was funny. King Kong in the middle of the track on one of the buildings and the train is running around the track with the bananas all over the train.

Sidenote - I just typed banana like 10 times and it is super hard. I kept losing track of how many anana's I had typed and had to go back and count every single time.

This is our photo op. Avery and me chillin' in the train cut out.

This was the part of the museum trip we were looking forward to the most. We knew Avery would LOVE it. She is such a thrill seeker. BUT WAIT. The train was not working :( So sad. We had some friends who went the weekend before this and they said the train wasn't working when they went either. We were so hopeful that it would be running when we went because we had seen it chugging around the tracks when we had driven by to go to the Space Museum earlier that week. No luck.

Family photo outside the museum.

Baby Girl and the Hubs. Look at her cheesy smile.

Troy basically talked with the guys who worked there the whole time. Troy was like, "Those guys need to get out more. I don't think enough people come here and they are dying for adult interaction." They were super super nice. Just not good museum tour guides. We enjoyed talking to some locals, but again, just not what we expected. Oh well. It got us out of TLF and gave us a change of scenery. Goal achieved. And I got to go to Sonic on the way home.

I am counting down the days until Troy's graduation and then we'll be moving to Vegas and have more to do. I mean, it's Las Vegas. People vacation there. Anyone ever vacation to Alamogordo? Anyone? I'd love to talk to you. Cute photos of Avery though right?