Our annual poorly planned amusement park road trip for my birthday week starts tomorrow! This one is pretty ambitious: lots of states, SUPER GLAMOROUS, no hotels booked yet, and honestly probably not enough effort was put into this. But hopefully there will be many pockets of fun tucked into the chaos!

Henry has changed the route numerous times and even tried to change it AGAIN the other night but I snapped and said JUST LEAVE IT!!

The most solid plans are as follows:

1. Beech Bend Park in Bowling Green, KY
2. Six Flags over St. Louis
3. SILVER DOLLAR CITY, THE REDEMPTION TOUR in Branson, MO
4. Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, MO
5. Adventureland in Altoona, IA (our first time in Iowa and I am bizarrely stoked for this! I WANT A CORN MAGNET)
6. Lost Island in WATERLOO, IA
7. Arnolds Park Amusement Park in….Arnolds Park, IA
8. Bay Beach in Green Bay, WI (you might remember that we were supposed to go here a few summers ago when we went to Wisconsin Dells but the forecast was BIG RAIN and it was quite a bit out of the way so we dumped that plan.

I am sure there will be TONS of arguing, crying, stressing (hate leaving Penelope BUT my mom will be staying with her so that gives me some peace), and general bitch fests. But it’s gotta be better than last summer’s emotional disaster of a birthday road trip. I won’t discredit the memories because there were some good moments but the fact of the matter was that I was not emotionally stable enough to be able to go on a healthy vacation like that. I was deep in the throes of grief over the loss of Bambi, and consumed with daily stress and fear over Chooch leaving for college. PROBABLY should have stayed home, but can’t change that now!

I am lowkey hoping that this one turns out to be as memorable and fun as our Spring Break Coaster Road Trip of 2022 – that one was AMAZING and we actually barely fought. Please wish this for us, lol.

Anyway, I’ll be liveblogging and microblogging along the way because it’s legit my favorite thing to do AND I EVEN GOT A NEW VACATION JOURNAL so I can write down my BIG FEELINGS every time Henry and Chooch hurt me. I anticipate lots of closed-quarters gaslighting. We’ll see.

What I’m most looking forward to:

• getting to (hopefully) ride the coasters that weren’t running the last time we were at Silver Dollar City
• A BRAND NEW RMC JUST OPENED LAST WEEK AT LOST ISLAND!!!
• legit just being in Iowa, I’m so oddly fascinated
• Mamba at Worlds of Fun
• hopefully finding quirky and old diners to eat at and potentially purchase merch! (I love collecting t-shirts from diners we eat at, it’s dumb but I don’t care)
• sending postcards! I was prepared this time and bought postcard stamps to take with me and by that I mean Henry sent to Chooch to the post office to buy postcard stamps for me
• spending time together because this might be Chooch’s last summer home while he’s in college and after that, I do not anticipate him wanting to vacation with his parents lol.

Well, that’s it. Catch me on my exotic road trip for the next week. In the middle of MAGAland. Yee haw.

 

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