It's the House on Christmas Street

[austin_dern]

Guess who spent the whole day either at work or at pinball league? And you know who's going to see a double dose of Crossroads Village pictures to make up for it? If your answers were ``you'', meaning me, and ``me'', meaning you, then you, meaning you, were right.

The centerpiece of any Crossroads Village trip is the carousel. Here's some horses on display showing off, particularly, the kind of shape they were in before restoration.

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And here's a case that shows off just how bad a horse's leg can be.

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More horse parts, including a tail. I'm sorry to report that's from an actual once-living horse.

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And here's the carousel. The blankets are festive and also protect the mounts from snow- and mud-caked boots.

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And who's the maker? Large C W Parker, Leavenworth, Kansas.

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Almost all the horses at the Crossroads Village carousel are sponsored by someone; here's two horses that I think are the ones we rode, and their dedication plaques.

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Went for a dramatic low shot between the horses here.

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And here's an over-the-shoulder picture to look back.

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This time around we rode in the chariot for some reason and it was a much better, more intense, ride than we imagined. In front is a row of kiddie-size horses.

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Exiting the carousel building we got this view of the wreath and what totally is not the couple on top of a wedding cake in the middle of that.

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Here's a giant white Christmas ornament ready to be walked into.

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While it was above freezing, once again, that meant the melted snow gave us good reflective puddles just everywhere.

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Trivia: An April 1973 Consumer Reports review of the Mazda RX-2 found it burned a quart of oil every 875 miles (to lubricate the Wankel engine seals) and averaged 15 mpg, good by American standards but far lower than typical Japanese imports. Source: Car Wars: The Untold Story, Robert Sobel.

Currently Reading: Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space, Adam Higginbotham.

Comments

[lilfluff]

15 mpg was considered good back then‽ Wow, I knew fuel efficiency had improved but I hadn't realized it was that dramatic in more or less my lifetime. My sense of what early fuel efficiency was like was set by the family van I occasionally drove in the 90s which got 20 miles to the gallon, and I always thought of that as low. I knew about burning through oil on those rotaries, but I don't think I'd ever heard a mileage number before.