Clifton Lights

I guess the best part of visiting Clifton Mills at Christmas is the lights display. The display was first seen in 1988 using only 100,000 lights and 1,000 Santa Clauses. The display has brown to more than 3,600,000 lights and more than 3,000 Santa Clauses which now takes 12 men all year to install and maintain.



There is an animated miniature village, a replica of the village of Clifton including nearly 1,000 feet of train tracks and more than 100 animated mechanical wonders.



To find out more about Clifton Mills, go to

http://www.cliftonmill.com/

Clifton Village

One of the displays at Clifton Mills is a hand crafted model village of clifton mills which probably has all the buildings of Clifton on display in miniature form. They have ball parks, drive-in movies, churches, gas stations, Churches, etc. From what I could tell, they all must be an almost exact model of the buildings. A lot of the displays are animated--trains, cars, etc. I guess it is a great attraction for all the young children and the old people with young hearts. I know we certainly enjoyed the sights.

Clifton Santa Display

One of the main attractions at Clifton Mills besides the lights is the Santa display. There are over 3600 Santas that have been collected over the years on display. The Santas in the slide show are only a few of the Santas on display. Many are antique/vintage Santas. All are interesting to view and if you really looked at each one, you would probably be there all day. Most are static, but, some are animated and are enjoyable to watch.

Christmas Day

We had a great day Christmas. It was fun watching the girls open their presents. They seemed to enjoy what they received.

Linda cooked a great meal and we had a late lunch/early dinner. As usual, we ate too much and we will probably pay for it after Christmas.

We went to Clifton Mills Christmas night to view the lights. There are over 3.6 million lights in the display and it is rated as the best Christmas Lights display in Ohio. This is the third time we have been and it gets better every year. They have added a musical lights program that is computerized and as the music plays, different parts of the lights are turned on or off. I will post a slide show of some of the lights later.

Sunday Linda took Chris, Suzi and the girls to Dayton Mall to shop and I stayed at home. Today we all went to the Mall at Fairfield Commons. The girls found a few things to buy at each of the malls. I think tomorrow will include a trip to the malls around Cincinnati, Ohio. I may opt out of that trip. Shopping was never high on my list of things to do. I guess that is why Linda always does our shopping.

St Clair State Park Christmas Lights

After many hours of driving Chris, Suzi and the girls finally arrived in Trotwood around 3:00 AM December 24. We had a relatively quiet Christmas Eve, but, decided to go to St Clair State Park--about 40 minute drive--to visit a light display that is put up each year at the park which is located in Eaton, Ohio. We have been in Ohio nearly 15 years and this is the first year that we have gone to visit the display. After the visit, I doubt that it will be the last. The pictures do not do the display justice. I think the snow on the ground confused my automatic light adjustment/focus and they did not come out as good as I had hoped. The pictures that I did take is less than 10% of the light display in the park. You can drive through the whole park without getting out of your car. However, there is a parking area so we did get out to take pictures and visit some of the buildings. There is no fee for entry and they also provide free hot chocolate and cookies. They do accept donations so I left a donation.

We plan on going to Clifton Mills to see the old mill lighting display. It is voted the best Christmas light display in Ohio and the display is absolutely beautiful. We have been there before, but it has been over 5 years. Hopefully, we will get some good pictures to post.