Hellooooooo people! Wren here. Before you start scratching your head in bewilderment, I’ll just jump in and say that Orchid let me do the writing for this post. She said I’m super responsible–well, not exactly, but that I can narrate this post as long as I don’t cause any ‘trouble.’ As if! Anyway, this is a retelling of my Great Big Adventure yesterday, so we kinda decided I should be the one telling it. You ready? Good. Let’s begin.
It started sometime around 6:30 a.m. The train into town doesn’t come very often on Sundays, so we had to wake up early to catch it. (Sounds like catching a cold, but there’s a lot more running than sneezing involved, let me tell you.) Orchid pulled me outta bed and said, “Wake up, Wren! Today’s the day! Get ready for your first big adventure!”
We’d been planning the trip for a long time–eight whole hours–and wanted to make the most of it. Orchid and her Mom had some errands to run in town, and I begged them to take me along. I’m pretty good at persuasion, so they told me to get my things together and come along with them. To which I agreed, naturally.
Eventually, after much persuading and negotiating and plenty of grumbling, we were all ready to set off for the rails. (Something about ‘rails’ seems nicer than saying ‘train’ all the time. Anyway.) We got there with plenty of time remaining, and that’s when Orchid took out her camera and started getting some cool shots of the locomotive… and me!
The sun had just about risen, so the sunlight in the coach was creating a nice landscape-y effect. First, Orchid snapped some photos of the inside of the train, alongside a snapshot of our view from the window:
The seats looked pretty climbable, and I asked Orchid if I could stretch my legs and climb for a bit. There weren’t very many people there anyway. But she told me to wait, because someone was coming to collect the train tickets, and might not like it if I started climbing on the seats. So I waited. (I didn’t need a ticket, by the way. I rode for free. Yippee! 🙂 )
For a few minutes I spent some time chilling on the edge of the seat, by the window.
Then I started getting closer to the window, to get a better view. The train still hadn’t moved. Orchid gave me a boost, and told me to look for some birds to snap photos of. We didn’t see any, but I got a nice view.
I wondered if my hand would reflect in the window glass. It kind of did, but the camera didn’t capture it very well.
Orchid had brought along some craft stuff to make more sleeping bags for the store. I think, in all, she brought two balls of yarn, some scissors, a crochet hook and three knitting needles (double-pointed). In sum: a lot of stuff.
While she was getting all that organized, I grabbed my hat and played with it a bit. There wasn’t much use wearing it on the train, but it made for an interesting bowl-like object. No rabbits, unfortunately.
And THEN, at long last, the train started moving. I was so excited I started jumping up and down, but the train gave a jolt and I sat down again, not wanting to fall on the floor.
Lots of buildings and barns and fences and houses whizzed by. Now and then Orchid let me peek outside and around the coach, to see what was going on. I think there was an elderly gentleman a few rows back, but he didn’t really notice us.
A couple stops later, I was getting a little motion-sick. Orchid and her Mom were fine, but it was getting kind of hard for me to breathe comfortably. Orchid suggested I lay down and get some rest, as we’d be out the whole day and she didn’t want me to get too tired.
She gave me my hat to pull over my head, which helped. So I slept for a bit.
I woke up a few more stops later. More people had gotten on, but not very many. A few of the seating rows in front of us were still vacant. I asked Orchid if it was always this empty traveling into town. She told me more people come in as the stops get closer inbound, so pretty soon most, if not all, of the seats would be full. The ticket collector had already gone past a long time ago, so Orchid said I could stretch my legs and climb for a bit, if I wanted to. Gosh, did I need the exercise.
Fully-stretched and all ready for the rest of the day, I sat back down near the seat. Just for fun, Orchid made me lay across Mom’s special bag. I think she got it a very long time ago, before Orchid was born. Anyhow, it was a fun, thick stretchy material, and I didn’t mind posing again.
Orchid had been working on a mint-colored sleeping bag, and was almost done with the base. She didn’t get a chance to photo the WIP (work in progress), for by then we’d almost reached downtown. I watched her quickly put away everything, waiting for my turn to be stuffed in the backpack. One of the inconveniences of small doll traveling, I will admit. But as long as there was yarn to buffer all the walking, I didn’t mind going back in.
Very soon, we’d left the train and were heading out for more of the adventure! I don’t think the station was very crowded, as the backpack didn’t bump into very many things, and the noise was so-so. At that point, I was mostly trying not to get squashed in the bag, or bumped around too much. It wasn’t that bad, but I wouldn’t have minded a cushier mode of transport. Oh well. 😛
Our trip downtown, I think, mainly revolved around where we were going at what time. Orchid’s Mom is excellent at planning the most efficient route, so we did a kind of circular route to cover every place we planned to stop by.
The next time I was allowed to hop out of the backpack was in front of a café grocery store place. I don’t think I mentioned this yet, but the weather was GLORIOUS yesterday. The sunshine was just gorgeous. It’s the kind of weather I like the best: not too hot, not too cold, sunshine with some breeze. I’ve always loved temps between 55℉ and 70℉. Perfection.
We stopped there for a short while to eat some yogurt and enjoy the beautiful sunshine. Orchid showed me her tiny tub of strawberry yogurt (I like calling the container a capsule, don’t know why).
She even let me stir it a bit, to get all the strawberry goodness from the bottom. It smelled terrific, but I couldn’t relish in it because I can’t eat human food. siiiiiiiiigh
It was getting sunnier and sunnier, so I took my hat out of the backpack and Orchid took some photos of me. She said I look ‘photogenic,’ whatever that means.
It wasn’t very hard to give a classic pose-y look, as there lots of people to observe. There was some guy photographing a lady on a bike, and talking with her about lightning or something. I noticed Orchid gazing longingly at the camera he was using. Based on my limited camera knowledge, it did look pretty high-tech. Anyway.
We went a few places after that to finish up the errands. I remember some busing and getting on and off and a ton of walking–it’s all kinda fuzzy in my mind because I was in the backpack the whole time. Humph.
Orchid did show me this picture of a fenced-in garden we passed. I think that scarecrow guy is kinda groovy.
THEN Orchid asked her Mom if we could go to some landing place thing. Her mom agreed, since it was on the way to somewhere we were going. By that time it was getting a bit windy. I could feel the breeze through the backpack fabric. We took a bus up there and walked right to the top of the landing. My goodness, that view:
Facing the other way:
Now prepare yourselves for the next part of this adventure… I got out again, and this time we did some really amazing photography on the landing. Mom made the point of holding me in some of the pictures, so I wouldn’t fall off from the increasing wind.
After a while I had to sit down for a bit.
That bridge in the background was so lovely.
I just couldn’t contain my excitement. 😉
Now, while Mom was walking around the Landing, Orchid and I tried an, er, interesting stunt–probably one of the most dangerous we’ll ever do. I asked Orchid to hold me over the ledge, to make it look like I was climbing and finally reached the top. Considering that the drop below was over 50 feet, and right above the roof of a car, I was hanging on for dear life. So, yeah. Don’t think we’ll be trying that again. The picture did come out kinda cool, though:
Safely back on the platform, I could see pretty much every angle of the area. There was a steamer or ship or whatever you call it sailing out, so I waved at it and called: “Hellooooooo out there! Ahoy!”
Ooh, and I asked Orchid to let me borrow the camera and take a selfie. That also turned out well.
Orchid and I tried doing a “look how big my hand is compared to that building!” but the images kept blurring. So we settled with this:
Orchid also took some photos of my sleeping bag/carrying thing, and her minty WIP for the same pattern:
I kicked off my boots and strolled around barefoot for a few minutes, until it got too cold.
A closeup of my cute boots, ’cause why not?
When we left the Landing and were waiting for the bus back, I posed for a final photo of the day. Soon after, we got on the train and rode all the way back.
Orchid finished the next sleeping bag, and started on another–this time the same color as mine. We were all a bit sleepy after that long day out, so most of the ride was spent snoozing.
All in all, yesterday was AWESOME. I got to see so much of the town, explore all kinds of different places, and loved just sitting back and watching everything that went on. You do know, though, there’s more to this story. My part of the day ended when we got back, but there’s even more that happened afterwards. Orchid will tell you about that in the next post. Thanks for reading this narrative about my/our escapades on Sunday! See ya next time!
-Wren
