{Polar Express 2017}


Way back before Thanksgiving we rode on the Polar Express train ride in Palestine, TX! I mentioned it briefly in a 2017 Winter Bucket list post, here, but wanted to share more pictures from the weekend. We always get our tickets to Polar Express for November because our December is way too crazy! And, I love that it introduces us to the Christmas season a little earlier than normal!

We headed down to Palestine a little after noon on Friday and got there some time around 2:00 - 2:30ish! We hung out at the campsite, did a little hiking and then set out to find a good restaurant for supper. We ate at Legends Old Time Burger in Jacksonville, TX and oh my word, it was amazing! Everyone loved it. We will definitely be going back there again!

Saturday we all slept in before a busy day! We stopped by the Rusk train depot before visiting the Grinch. We wanted to be able to see things and take pictures without it being saturated with people.  It's such a pretty train depot.















There were huge piles of leaves just begging us to throw them! And that we did. Mason had a blast!






After the depot we headed to Palestine to visit our favorite Grinch! I will be sharing a whole post on the Grinch soon! He's so awesome that he deserves his own post. {plus, I kind of took a lot of pictures!}

That evening we headed for the Polar Express train ride. It was sunny and warm all day long, but decided to change drastically on our way from Rusk to Palestine {which is only a 30 minute drive}! We were greeted at the Palestine depot with crazy wind and temperatures that had dropped at least 20 degrees! We most definitely were not prepared for that. We had on pajamas and thin sweaters. And then we realized that we were riding in the open train cars...

We got our tickets, found a table to sit at under the covered tent and hung out until time to board the train. We did visit the gift shop to get our 2017 Polar Express ornament and a couple of things for Mason.




And then we stood in the cold waiting to get on the train! It seemed like it took forever before they let us board! But then we did and it was as cold in the open car traincar like we thought it would be. Thank God! We actually enjoyed the open train cars and agreed we'd want those seats again! The fresh air was nice, it seemed more spacious and you could see things better!




The moment that Santa steps on the train you can just feel the magic so thick. It's one of my favorite nights and events, ever! I almost feel like a kid again. But even better than that, I get to see the magic of Christmas through my child's eyes!!





It's so hard to get good pictures inside of a dark train, but the memories will be in our hearts forever. After our train ride we took a couple of pictures before heading to Denny's in our Christmas pajamas!




Do you have a Polar Express near you?

6 comments

  1. I feel like Texas has all the good things. We have an old train that offers rides but no grinch!

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  2. What a great experience. We have something about an hour south of us and tickets go so fast, we have yet to be able to snag a set so we can go.

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  3. I NEED shirts like you have. We have Christmas Vacation. So cool. I really want to take the girls on our Polar Express, but not sure they are old enough yet. I might way a year or two. But it looks like Mason had the best time!

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  4. HOW AMAZING!! I have wanted to do this with the kids for so long, but the nearest Polar Express experience is several hours away from us. This is just wonderful!

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  5. This is just SO neat! I wish we had something like this near us, but, sadly, we don't.

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Thanks for the comments! Hope you are having an amazing day!!