Saturday, December 4, 2010

Trail of Lights 2010









Each year, Andrew and I go to The Denver Botanic Garden's "Blossoms of Lights." It's an event at the Gardens (free for members on opening weekend) that entails drinking hot chocolate, listening to carolers, and walking through paths of over one million LED Christmas lights. Starting three years ago, they added in a similar "Trail of Lights." We went once, and while it's still nice, we didn't enjoy it quite as much as the Blossoms of Lights.

This year, we opted to go to Trail of Lights because we had Oliver, and Trail of Lights is not as crowded. In past years, we've had to drive around for close to an hour to find parking for Blossoms of Lights! Anyway, we mistakenly thought the event started at 5pm today. We arrived at 4:45pm to try to beat most of the crowd. Beat the crowd, we did. The sign said it didn't start until 5:30pm! There were two other cars in the entire lot. It was getting very cold, and Oliver was mad because he was in his snowsuit. We decided we'd walk down to the entrance and enjoy the lights from a distance and then head home. Sometimes, you have to cut things short with little ones!

We were surprised to find no people at the entrance, and it wasn't blocked off at all. Additionally, all the lights were already on. I reasoned with myself. I'm a member of the Gardens, so the event is free for us. It's not like we'd be skipping on paying and stealing... So, we entered.

Even though the sun hadn't quite set yet and so the lights weren't as spectacular as they would have been later in the evening, the walk was perfect for us. We were able to navigate the stroller well, stop when we needed to, and take pictures. A few times, we ran into employees. We said hello and waited for them to kick us out, but no one even questioned us. It was nice having the event to ourselves!

We stayed for about 20 minutes. Oliver settled down and even started to enjoy his snowsuit. It was cute to see him pointing at everything with his gloved hands. At one point, we found a little barn filled with sheep and geese, so he even got to see animals. It was a wonderful night (even if there were no hot chocolates and carolers for us--that's what we get for sneaking in)!

No comments: