And now, sad to say, we come to the last of our holiday activities. This was going to the Night Lights drive-through at the Michigan International Speedway. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger had been there already this season; she went to the 5K run back in mid-November. Early for a Christmas thing but they couldn't have it later and hope for decent weather when they didn't have cars driving through.
We got off to a late start because of a real actual grown-up type interaction. A friend from pinball league had invited us to dinner with him and his wife, and we couldn't make that without missing Night Lights. We renegotiated that to hanging out a little in the afternoon, and it was a fun time that also introduced us to the take-out options of this place in town that sells hipster waffles. It was all great fun and we were glad doing it and are just scared we'll have to have them over to our house now.
But after that, and a little bit later than we expected, we got back home, made a bunch of popcorn, put it in a big grocery bag that turned out to be the only bag capable of holding all that, and drove the hour-plus down to Brooklyn, Michigan, home of the Speedway.
bunnyhugger offered several times to take over the driving through the Speedway, so that I would feel more free to take photographs, since she'd already had the chance to take all the photographs she wanted back in November. Kind, but after all, I can stop the car and roll the windows down anytime I want. I think I took fewer pictures this year than last, but I haven't gone and actually done a tally of them. We'll know when we see how many pictures of out-of-focus lights I post around here up in ... oh, let's say May.
The number of light displays grew this year, both in the free area (mostly sponsors) and in the paid admission. The most prominent new features were rows of tulip lights plus a couple of Dutch girls to tend them, and a fairy-tale section that offers such Christmas-relevant displays as The Three Little Pigs. I don't understand the link there, but I like it. Also near the front of the section is a friendly-looking toony wolf, something closer to a Cookie Crisp mascot than a Big Bad Wolf. The section that's dinosaurs and dragons and sea monsters hanging around Christmas is still there, too, so don't worry.
Also still there: two raccoons! They, and two squirrels and two rabbits, are part of a display leading up to a Noah's Ark. You know, from the famous Christmas story about the flooding of the world. Look, we already had penguins playing basketball with a hoop on a candy cane, I can't make all the logical connections for you.
We were almost surely not the last people to drive through Night Lights, which was on its last night of the season. We got in when there was still a half-hour to go, after all. But we were certainly among the last people, and we went a long while without someone else overtaking us, so who knows? Their not-too-high-power FM station transmitting Christmas songs didn't fade out until we'd been on the road a good fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and at that it came close enough to the half-hour we weren't positive that they hadn't just switched it off for the close of the night.
With that, there's not much else to do for Christmas besides take it down.
But now, in my photo reel, there's continuing the train ride around the part of Camden Park we spent less time in to do.
Here's the last turn of the log flume, just before it ascends to the greatest height for the second and bigger splashdown.
Train chugging along against the wilderness. On the left sure looks like a onetime service road that's more of a trail now.
More of that far end of the park, with the Tilt-A-Whirl as seen from the train. The Paratrooper is somewhere around here too.
And here, through a break in the forest, we see ... the swan boats ride at Michigan's Adventure?! How does that happen?!
The park has a miniature golf course that we'd have loved to have played except it was closed. Turns out they're renovating the course and here I got a little view of the renovation being done.
Turns out changing out the astroturf is done about like you would imagine.
Trivia: In 1812 Rhode Island's general assembly voted to not allow the state militia to be called into national service for the war with Britain. Source: Rhode Island: A History, William G McLoughlin.
Currently Reading: Quantum Mechanics: The Theoretical Minimum, Leonard Susskind, Art Friedman.
