Slow Down, Gym Shoe!: Riding the Rails!

Since we've been doing train week, today was our big chance to ride on a real train1 Little Bear, Pufferfish and I took a short train ride to a town just a few stops away. It was perfect, because Metra doesn't charge you at all for kids under six years old, and Little Bear is still five! so both of the girls were free. I let Little Bear hold my ticket and give it to the conductor, though, and she found two more tickets on the train, so now she has three tickets to keep as suvenires!
Little Bear was really scared of getting on the train, when I first told her we were going. She was afraid it would go to fast, or that it would crash. She kept telling me that if she had to go, she wanted to sit on the bottom floor. But as soon as she stepped onto the train, all of her fears disappeared, and she was having a great time! By the end of the ride there, she told me that on the way back she wanted to ride on the top deck! It was just like the paddleboating drama last summer!
Anyway, we just went a few towns away. We walked to a near by park to play at the playground for a while, and then went to Cold Stone Creamery for ice cream. The train station in the town we went to had a pedestrian tunnel that went under the tracks, so while we waited for our train to take us home, I let the girls run back and forth in the tunnel. We discovered that it was really echoey! If you stood at one end of the tunnel and clapped your hands or stomped your feet, you would hear the sound twice... once when you did it, and once when it bounced off the wall at the other end of the tunnel! A fascinating lesson in science? A great way to keep two little kids amused and stay safely away from the parking lot and train tracks? You be the judge!
They both absolutely loved our train adventure. And they were exhausted by the end! When we got back to our train station, I put Pufferfish in her car seat, and by the time I had backed out of my spot, she was passed out cold!
Anyway, here are some pics.

Little Bear and Pufferfish wait in the train station, and Little Bear proudly holds the ticket we just bought!

Little Bear overcomes her fear of riding the train!

Pufferfish looks out the window at the scenery!

Playing in the echoey tunnel.

Riding on the top deck on the way home!

It was so much fun. I think it will be nice in the summer, at least every few weeks or so, to take short little train rides! It really is cheap thrills!

And now, for no apparent reason, here's Little Bear and Jamaya!