Lights

Started: 2026-01-02 20:25:57

Submitted: 2026-01-02 20:22:15

Visibility: World-readable

Christmas lights on display

I offered my kids a menu of Christmas-involved activities, and they decided to see the holiday lights display at Vasona County Park, across the mountain in Los Gatos, possibly because it involved the least effort on their part.

By the time I got around to looking at timed tickets for the event all of the weekend slots were full, but the weekday tickets were still fairly available. I picked Wednesday the 17th of December because it seemed like a good idea. Kiesa made hot chocolate and put it in a thermos so we could drink it as we drove through the park. (It turned out that the thermos insulated the hot chocolate well enough that it was still quite warm, almost too hot to drink, an hour later.) We left home in time to drive across the mountain for our 18:30 ticketed slot; then we entered the queue of cars lined up on the streets outside the park and it took us another 25 minutes to actually reach the park. (The event's organizers expected this volume of traffic and laid out a specific approach path that maximized the length of side roads that could be used for the queue, excluded some other traffic from key intersections, and provided traffic controls.)

Santa Clara County Parks holiday lights

Once we reached the front of the queue of cars we entered the park, turned off our headlights (or at least, I tried to turn off my headlights, modern cars don't like turning their headlights off so I'm not absolutely sure I managed it; which may or may not explain why other cars had their lights on) and beheld the lights before us.

Penguins outlined in holiday lights

All of the roadways in the park were lined with holiday-inspired displays of colored lights on both sides of the road. Many were animated, with two or three or four different frames that showed the figures dancing or otherwise moving back and forth. (Some seemed like the timing was a bit off; one looked like it was supposed to be a figure raising its top hat, but the animation dwelt on the frame showing the hat on the figure's head.) One animation showed a juvenile penguin sliding off the roof of an igloo and splashing into the water below. The reindeer below moved their legs back and forth as they flew through the air but the effect is somewhat mangled by the exposure of the picture (possibly due to my iPhone attempting to take a long exposure shot) that clearly shows the other positions of the legs.

Santa and reindeer in holiday lights

We followed a specific route through the park, using what looked like most of the park's roads and paved surfaces. The route turned around and looped back on itself in a parking lot and we drove though a large tunnel of colored lights with ample room for any car to pass through.

Approaching a light tunnel