The CCZCC now stands at 9.
Dear Mother and Mike,
I have so much to tell you I don't know where to begin. I guess I will start with what we did over the weekend. Saturday we finally made it to Santa's Village. I think, in all, we drove 192 miles that day, but it was well worth it for many reasons. Firstly, to get out of this terrible smog. It was like living in a gas chamber all last week and Saturday was the worst day. Our eyes watered all the way out of L. A. but the area we went to had no smog at all. Secondly, the Santa's Village was just a wonderland (much better than the one in Colorado.)
[The first paragraph of this letter is so long and requires so much discussion and pictures that I'll have to break into it a few times. In fact, Part 1 of this letter will be just this first paragraph.]
[I'll start with some info on Santa's Village and its history. Santa's Village was located about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, near Lake Arrowhead in the San Bernardino National Forest. When Mom says it was much better than the one in Colorado, I assume she's referring to Santa's Workshop near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Mom and Dad went to Colorado on their honeymoon in 1966, so they must have visited Santa's Workshop then. Anyway, Santa's Village in California opened in 1955, about seven weeks before Disneyland. It closed in 1998, and then most of the buildings and attractions were left to deteriorate. But it reopened on December 2, 2016 after being purchased and undergoing a 30-month restoration project. You can find out more, including some photos of the decaying park as well as the reopened one, at these two links:
http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/formerly-creepy-christmas-theme-park-santas-village-has-reopened-its-doors-7680902/12
[It has been rebranded now as "Sky Park at Santa's Village" and seems to focus on more outdoor adventure activities, with the Christmas season limited to about two months.]
Dave took two rolls of film and we wanted to take that many more, but, alas, we ran out of film and it was too expensive to buy there ($5.50 plus tax!) We plan to go back when there is snow on the ground - it should really be beautiful then.
[$5.50 in 1967 bought about as much as $40 in 2017. Back in the day, before everyone carried a digital camera with them all the time, the number of pictures you could take was limited by the amount of film you had in your possession. Weird, huh?]
All the rides were real cute - a sleigh pulled by reindeer (Dancer, Vixen, etc.), a Cinderella pumpkin coach pulled by white horses, a big Christmas tree where you sat inside the Christmas balls and rode around, a sky monorail in the shape of a bumblebee, a bobsled ride that David Wayne loved and it was too fast and bumpy for "safety hazard" me, antique cars, and two little train rides (and more, too). The cutest thing I did was to go through "Alice Through the Looking Glass." It was like the house of mirrors at the fair. On this you listened to the recording of "Alice" as you walked through and they had fixed up shadow boxes of the Caterpillar, Cheshire Cat, and all the other characters in the story. It was as good as anything at Disneyland! David Wayne got to "blast" for rock candy in the dwarf's cave which was noisy so, therefore, great fun to him.
[The Bumblebee monorail Mom mentions was a suspended monorail with the cars painted to look like bumblebees. The slideshow at the LA Weekly link above has a picture (shown below) of one of the old monorail cars still on the site. Also, in the background of one of the photos in rotation on the home page of the current park (http://skyparksantasvillage.com/) you can see at least four of the old bumblebee cars. The current plan for the monorail is to have small bicycle pedal cars for riders to pedal around the monorail track. Here's an interesting bit of history about this monorail: It served as the test track for the suspended monorail at the 1964 New York World's Fair. (I'd like to know just what they tested at Santa's Village since the train cars for the World's Fair monorail each had a capacity of 40 people.)]
[Here are some pictures presumably taken during this trip to Santa's Village. I say presumably because Mom looks a bit more than three months pregnant in one of them, so some of these may have been taken during a future visit. Mom and I do seem to be wearing the same outfits in all the photos, though.]
[First up is the entrance to Santa's Village. Based on the overall shape, I think this building is still there in the new park.]
[Next is a picture of me standing outside Good Witch's Bakery, according to the sign above my head.]
[If you zoom in you will see the pose and facial expression I have in nearly all of the Santa's Village pictures. Maybe I didn't feel like standing still for pictures after that long car ride out there. It is worth noting that my belly is not exposed in any of the pictures.]
[Next is me at the entrance to Cinderella's pumpkin coach ride, I think.]
[Next is me at the North Pole a few years after Robert Peary claims to have reached it. I'm finally smiling a little in this one.]
[Mom's caption for this picture is "This pole is very cold and it turns around as the sun sets." You can see some of the monorail track in this picture, and to the right of the North Pole you can see the yellow front (or maybe the back) of one of the bumblebee monorail cars.]
[The last picture I'll post from this visit is me and Mom at the Alice in Wonderland attraction that Mom really liked. This is the picture where Mom looks very pregnant, or maybe it's a funhouse mirror effect.]
[Other than the fact that Mom just can't take her eyes off her adorable child, would you like to know what else is really interesting about this picture? There is a picture of this exact location at the atlasobscura web site, taken when Santa's Village was being left to decay. Here is that picture:]
[It looks like the rightmost pane of glass has been removed and is possibly visible (with some other glass) in the bottom left of that photo. Note that the little guy blowing the trumpet is long gone, but his ledge is still there.]
We had to stand in line to see Santa, but Dave didn't mind this line at all - Santa Claus really chewed out all the kids that came to sit on his lap. He told David Wayne to pick up his toys and to stop leaving his wet towel on the bathroom floor. If David Wayne doesn't believe the bit about Santa's spies, his daddy and I do as these are two things we are constantly getting onto David Wayne about. P. S. - We haven't had to say a word since his talk with Santa!
[I remember being genuinely surprised that Santa told me to stop leaving my wet towels on the bathroom floor. He nailed that one. Apparently it worked, too, based on what Mom wrote. And to give you something to look forward to, you'll probably get to see a picture of me sitting on Santa's lap when we get closer to Christmas.]
Tomorrow: Part 2
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