This was 2014 and one of my favorite picture years. Plus a few NEW pictures.
The Festival of Lights is now 25 years old and a great way to kick off the holiday season. It’s ALL Volunteer and NON-Profit. It began as a fundraiser sponsored by the Rotary Club to help get the city out of debt and then took on a life of its own and now helps with scholarships and special projects. The festival runs every night from Thanksgiving to New Years. So if you have company in town for Thanksgiving it’s a great jump start to your holidays. You can drive your own car or take a horse drawn carriage ride through the displays. They have also coordinated a local radio station to listen to as you view the displays. The night we went through the fog was moving in early so a few of the pictures look a bit “smoky”.
As of this year they have the world’s tallest (41 feet, 16,000 pounds with working jaw) nutcracker built by a local company, 500,00 lights, 90 animated displays, 3D displays, horse drawn carriage rides through the displays and a Holiday Village with Santa, hot cider with a bake sale and a synchronized light show in the courtyard. The displays depict fairy tales, the military, patriotism, the local logging industry, local vineyards, local fishing and the traditional Christmas songs and scenes. People come from all over to see it. Unfortunately for locals, it doesn’t change much, but is still fun every few years.
Three of my favorite munchkins from next door were coincidentally there the same night we were so had to snap a few pictures of the discussions with Santa. They have grown SOOOOOOOO much!
Even the lights with errors turned out cute. It was difficult to get great pictures or continuous pictures of the animated scenes since there were so many cars behind us.
This snowman is on a corner in our neighborhood hugging a light standard.
Hubby made this for me to wake up to in the back yard before the snow got too bad. The house across the street usually looks horrible, but NOT when it’s under a blanket of snow.
Even Rudolph was shivering! But not this year as he was donated to charity last year 😀
The first day after he storm was absolutely gorgeous though!
The duck pond behind the neighborhood was truly a work of art.
Obviously we hadn’t gone anywhere – no tire tracks!
What beautiful pictures! The one of the river is just gorgeous!!! <3
What festive pictures! The Festival of Lights looks like a lot of fun! We have a drive through light thing here, Christmas in the Park that’s free with donations to charity at the end. We don’t go very often because it gets insanely crowded (think 2 hour wait). How fun it would be to ride a horse drawn carriage through something like that!
This one gets really busy too! It’s not too bad price wise – $10 per car – sponsored by the Rotary club and the proceeds are used for charity!
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