T’was the day before my birthday (Tuesday the 29th) and we left Branson bright and early for Kansas City – the one in Missouri. Trust me, it was tempting to find an excuse to cross over into Kansas and knock another state off the list but we didn’t have time.

According to my vacation journal, it wasn’t all that bright and early – more like 8am, and I noted that I would not be missing the hideous TRUMP MERCHANDISE STORE that sprayed us with fascism every time we drove past. I wanted to scream TRUMP HATES YOU to some fat old white couple that were exiting at one point but I didn’t think fast enough to get the window down. Now I want to go back and just drive back and forth screaming EPSTEIN FILES until my throat bleeds.

Sorry not sorry, I know this isn’t vacation-related but please set yourself aflame and fuck off if you’re MAGA and reading this. You’re all cunts.

OK back to the road. To Chooch’s chagrin, Henry had that whole bag of peanut brittle to nosh on during the drive, and this set him off in a big way at one point when he witnessed Henry sticking his whole peanut brittled-hand into his mouth. Henry tried to play it off like Chooch was overreacting but I saw it too and it was giving Neanderthal so I told him he brings down the value of our family when he does shit like this. Bitch.

We crossed over this lake and I was like, “OMG SO MANY REFERENCES TO TRUMAN!” which I wouldn’t have noticed if our beloved Pappos server hadn’t been named Truman. We thought this was so coincidental until I was perusing Roadside America for tourist traps and noted that there were some Harry Truman historical sites on there so I cried, “Ohhhhh! It’s because HARRY S TRUMAN was FROM Missouri!”

Mystery solved. :(

DO YOU GUYS THINK THAT TRUMAN IS A DISTANT RELATIVE??

Worlds of Fun! I will tell you right now that this might have been the hottest day yet. It was high 90s and the “feels like” was around 112 or 114 I think Henry said?? Just the walk from the car to the entrance had me feeling drained.

Luckily the carousel was right at the entrance so I was like, “THIS. NOW. BEFORE WE GET TOO GROSS.”

Chooch was pouting immediately because it was his turn to take the #carouselfie, lol.

It was a carousel. Nothing memorable.

Immediately I was impressed with the theming. I love parks that get internationalicious.

I remember from here, we got in Patriot which is a B&M suspended coaster and it was very nice + a walk-on. The park had already been open for a good hour by the time we got there and it was not crowded at all. HOWEVER, what kind of threw a wrench in that was that, immediately after getting off Patriot, we found out that the wild mouse-y coaster was closed for the day AND MAMBA WAS DOWN. Literally, an empty train was chilling on the lift hill and it was honestly the greatest disappointment I experienced during the whole trip. IT WAS ON THE LIST I POSTED THE NIGHT BEFORE WE LEFT OF MY MOST ANTICIPATED RIDES, IF YOU REMEMBER! I still don’t even know what the issue was but it pissed me off so much.

From there, we walked to Zambezi Zinger, the newest coaster – I think it just opened last season? I stopped caring about coaster YouTube for a while there. It didn’t seem like the line was THAT long until you factored in that the ops were kind of slow (they WERE running 2 trains from what I remember, though). Plus, the boomerang next to it was ALSO DOWN so that was THREE CLOSED COASTERS – of course people were going to be flocking to this one!

We ended up standing in line for about 45 minutes I guess, with no shade, and I could feel the sweat dripping from my neck all the way down to my butt. I was wearing linen shorts AND NOT TO BE GROSS YOU GUYS BUY THEY LOOKED LIKE I PEED MYSELF. I was just sopping wet with sweat without even moving. It was so miserable.

The good thing is that there were no assholes in line. No line jumpers. In fact, we had no bad experiences with anyone in the park all day.

So, Zambezi Zinger! It has a pretty cool story. The OG Zambezi looked like this:

Steel with toboggan-style trains where you sit in line – similar to log flumes, but these are so awkward with coasters! Anyway, this coaster lives in a park in Colombia now (I tried to get Henry to want to go there last Christmas but he was being annoying about it), and the park decided to pay homage to it by recreating it in a sense as a wooden coaster, even giving it the same spiral lift hill.

It’s now encaged in this corrugated metal tunnel and I heard that the reasoning was so it can still operate in the rain. I guess when the new Zinger was unveiled, the lift hill was exposed and if the track got wet, the train couldn’t ascend. I didn’t experience it without the tunnel but thoosies HATE IT because it’s too loud now. I mean, it was whatever. I was just happy that it was running.

And we all really enjoyed it! Would I stand in a long line for it again while probably getting skin cancer on my scalp? Smrobably not but that was nice of you to ask.

On the train after eating at whatever the Mexican place is in the park. I had a veggie burrito bowl and it was actually quite satisfying; Chooch had a burrito and didn’t like it because the beans were refried and he was hoping they were black beans. Henry ended up eating our sloppy seconds haha.

To be honest, I was just happy to be sitting in A/C. When I think back to this day, my most vivid memory is just – drinking out of every water fountain we passed like a fucking stray dog.

But the train was nice! It took us all around and gave us some cool views of Prowler and Zambezi Zinger.

Oh, I do need to note that we made it there just as the train returned and all of the passengers had exited, but we couldn’t board yet because some fucking little kid was having his picture taken with the “conductor” who looked like Blake circa Warped Tour, and the other “train engineers” who again – just teenagers. It was so annoying because the pageant mom was like, “LET’S GET ANOTHER” and they were just snapping away like it was One Direction – I didn’t understand. Then when the family finally left, the little kid was screaming his head off, like, whatta brat! That fucking kid didn’t deserve those pictures WITH THE FAKE TRAIN PEOPLE.

Spoiler – the Boomerang did end up opening. It was actually testing while we were in line for Zambezi Zinger so we ended up riding it later. It was….a Boomerang. You always get the GP on these rides, and they act like they’ve never been on any amusement park ride before so you end up sitting there while the ride ops are repeatedly telling them things like, I don’t know, “You have to put on a shirt on.”

“Put the Epstein Files in that bin over there so they don’t blow away.”

You know, obvious disclaimers.

Yeah I just really thought the theming was a beaute.

We didn’t ride this – you guys, it was so hot, just the sight of most of the flat rides there made me feel like puking. I would have loved to though because Kennywood recently replaced their Enterprise with some new-fangled version and it just doesn’t hit like these old school ones.

This one is way prettier than Kennywood’s Enterprise was, though.

I think this was on the way to Prowler, which we couldn’t find at first.

Henry was like I WILL SIT THIS ONE OUT because there were so many bad woodies on this trip that he was ruined, lol. So he was making me and Chooch be the woodie guinea pigs.

Yo. Prowler SLAPPED. We got the back row. The father/son duo in front of us rode the whole time with their elbows on the side of the car and their fist under their chin, I guess it was their THANG you know, like their little coaster challenge. We ended up staying on because it was a station wait and no one was waiting for the back row, so Chooch decided he was going to ride the whole way doing the chin/fist thing too because, well, that’s Chooch for you.

(BTW the dad looked like Jack Griffith from AP Bio / whatever his character’s name is on Always Sunny, so we kept referring to him as AP Bio. You just would have had to have been there OK, don’t think too much into it.)

We did get Henry to ride it too and ended up going back later for more rides. The crew was SO FUN. Literally everyone working in this park had such a mid personality but this crew was like unhinged. The one time we went back, one of the girls said to Chooch, “Hey, he has a question for you—” and the boy crew member next to her was like, “No! Don’t listed to her” and they were going back and forth over this – Chooch was barely paying attention but I was ALL EARS!!! The mystery of the whole road trip.

WHAT WAS THE QUESTION????

Chooch *was* wearing a Drexel shirt so maybe it was about that??

(Literally all of his shirts that he packed, with the exception two Clairo shirts, were free participation shirts he got from school. He was a walking midwest advertisement for Drexel.)

Ew.

We made Chooch cart us around. I have nothing to say about these antique cars – they were fine.

Immediately afterward, Chooch and I made the ride operator have to get up, sigh heavily, pick up her measuring stick, and open the gate for us for these little swinging boats. SO SORRY.

Honestly, this park was NOT crowded. And the second time we went back to ride Zambezi, the line was only about 10 minutes long. The crowds had definitely dispersed.

We watched this weird parade and it made me uncomfortable.

Before heading out, we rode Patriot one more time. There was a real little girl in the row behind us who had never been on anything that extreme before and she was not having it. Her sisters kept saying, “Wooo!” and she was screaming, “Not woo!!”

I liked Patriot – I like most coasters like this – but what I didn’t like was that when it comes back to the brake run, the last two cars are suspended over air while the rest of the train is over top of a grated floor. Both times we were in the back and second to back so we just sat there with nothing but the ground beneath us, waiting for the train in the station to be sent so that we could pull in. I didn’t like that.

It was around 5PM when we decided to call it. It was SO HOT. And Mamba clearly was down for the day.

My thoughts: it was a pretty park but two coasters (+ another one that was on the website as being down all summer for planned maintenance so that wasn’t a surprise) being down was not a good look. That really disappointed me. I think that if you go to a park and not everything is operating, you should get a partial refund or comped somehow! As sad as I am about Mamba, we likely will not ever be back out to that park so that was my only chance of riding it.

But – perils of being a thoosie. Unpredictable weather and ride closures can really ruin a day! I wouldn’t say our day was RUINED though – Prowler was so fucking good. Like, shockingly good. I got a magnet and Chooch got a shirt – his only shirt of the whole trip because “nothing else stood out” to him. He’s very hard to impress.

And then we drove to Iowa!!

You can read about the rest of that night here. 

More to come! (Everyone at work hates it when management says that in meetings haha. I AM MANAGEMENT. Of Oh Honestly Erin.)

As per uje, I am getting way behind on these recaps. I didn’t realize how many pictures I had left so this will mostly be a photo-dump and final thoughts type of chumpie*, OK?

*(HOLY SHIT, almost as though I use that word every fucking day, this just popped in my head and my fingers typed it out so naturally but I have not used it nor heard it used since the 90s when I learned it from my friend Jameelah who I was also just talking about last week when I decided to regale Henry with the story of the first time I got high, which was at her house courtesy of her older brother and then I walked home through the woods after a snowfall and was so high that it felt like I was trudging through quicksand.)

Oh also! I forgot to mention in my first SDC post that when we were standing in line for Fire in the Hole, I was complaining about something and Chooch reached out like he was about to brush something off my face. I was thinking to myself, “OMG this is a moment to remember” because he and Henry would let me go ALL DAY with dirt/food/trash/the Epstein files on my face without saying a word because that’s the kind of amazing support I get from then. BUT THEN he goes, “Oh never mind, that’s just YOUR TEARS. BECAUSE ALL YOU DO IS CRY.”

WOW.

WOWOWOWOWOWOOWOWOWOWOWOW.

I just thought about this because he was in the kitchen bitching because the instructions on whatever frozen thing he was trying to make said “See our website for instructions” and then I said, “Wow cry about it” and then we started arguing about who cries more. Just a little PEEKSY into my life, you guys.

After emerging from the cave, it was definitely time to eat. This is when we realized that the park wasn’t actually all that crowded because there was NO ONE IN LINE for Miss Molly’s buffet.

Actually, we didn’t know it was a buffet so we were filling our plates up as much as possible.

This was the most food I have eaten in one sitting in a good long while and I am happy to tell you that this sufficed as lunch AND dinner, thank you very much.

Similar to Dollywood, SLD employs lots of old people so this place was staffed with a bunch of old women in bonnets and they were quite adorable. One of them was chatting with us while we were gluttonously spooning mounds of mayonnaise-central sides onto our plates – she did not seem to be judging and I’m sure she has seen much worse. She told us she’s from NY and uses her summer employment at SLD as a means to vacation. I like that they have these opportunities for a demographic that no one else wants to hire, so maybe this is something I should keep in my back pocket for when I’m Henry’s age.

Anyway, Henry’s main plate was just a disaster of various meats, I wanted to die just sitting next to it. Chooch was especially repulsed by the random stack of pepperoni on top of Henry’s salad plate. It was so excessive!!

So barbaric.

Chooch was all of us in that moment. Stuff & exhausted.

There were a few tables behind us that were full but other than that, this place was empty.

Similar to Dollywood, SDC has a lot of charming little shops strewn about and old guys in overalls doing wood carvings and stuff. It’s a very rustic and laid back vibe, the polar opposite of Six Flags. I also think  that this is the kind of park where people come not necessarily for the rides, but for the shows, of which we partook in zero. LOL.

Chooch made me cry because he kept hard-bouncing the bridge knowing that I would get freaked out :(

HENRY PICKING MEAT OUT OF HIS TEETH PROBABLY, UGH. GET BACK IN THE CAVE.

EW HE STILL HAS THE TOOTHPICK IN HIS MOUTH.

WTF WITH THIS TOOTHPICK???

OK Wildfire! I think this may have been my favorite coaster in the park – it was just a really slick B&M with amazing views. I was annoyed though because Chooch and I were the only ones in line for the back so he moved down in our row, leaving the two middle seats open, and then at the last second, an older couple came into our row and separated us which Chooch thought was so funny for some reason?? I didn’t really care that much but it would have been nice if we had been sitting next to each other when Henry took this picture!

Meanwhile, the wait for this one was very short – maybe 10 minutes (we rode it again later with Henry and it was a station wait) and we accidentally made friends with the family in front of us because they wee arguing and the dad made eye-contact with me and then tried to divert by asking Chooch if the “Dragon” on his shirt was his school’s mascot so Chooch said yeah and now another woman in their group had turned around to see and she was like, “OH OUR SCHOOL MASCOT IS ALSO A DRAGON” in a very heavy drawl and for some reason I was fascinated by her?! She was very pretty and seemed like a firecracker, like she must be the life of the family gatherings. Anyway, they were from Arkansas in case you were wondering. We saw just her by herself later and Chooch goes, “There’s our friend!” which always makes Henry feel left out because these things only happen to us when Henry is not around since his presence usually deters people from making small talk with us. MAYBE IT’S THE TOOTHPICK.

Anyway, this was an example of how it really was not crowded in the park at all and the wait times fluctuated a lot throughout the day, like people would go to some of the coasters in waves and jack the wait time up just for a small window, making it seem like it was very crowded.

Then we all got a refreshing ICEE! Well, Henry and I shared one because I didn’t want to get sick.

At some point late in the afternoon, Chooch and I decided it was time to ride Mystic Falls, the rapids ride. This one is scary though because at one point, your raft is taken up a huge lift and deposited at the top of a swirly water slide thing which then sends you down the last drop. When we were about to get in line, a staff member was at the entrance alerting guests to the fact that the ride was undergoing its daily maintenance – something about doing something to the water??? – and that the wait would be about 45 minutes. There were people still in line and she said that the 45 minutes included that wait time in addition to the maintenance so we shrugged and got in line. It ended up being a good bet because the ride reopened after about 20 minutes and then we got to skip a large portion of it when they were searching for two riders to fill out a raft that already had 6 people.

This part was weird because they let us skip the line by walking along the station platform so we actually got to enter the raft before the group of 6. I had already sat down in a seat at the end of one side while Chooch went to put our phones in the bin. When he came back, the other people had already started filling up the raft so he had no choice but to sit across from me. The man who sat next to me (effectively taking Chooch’s seat) asked if I wanted to move to the other side to sit with Chooch and I was like, “No, I’m fine” and didn’t think anything of it. Then one of the ride ops came over and said to our side of the raft specifically that we had too many people and I was like, “WTF then why did you let us skip the line to get on this raft??” but then I realized that he meant THERE WERE FIVE PEOPLE ON OUR SIDE when there were only 4 seats, and only 3 people on the opposite side. The adults on my side of the raft had two young boys sitting in between them ON ONE SEAT, like wtf were they thinking?? Why would they even get into the raft on my side when I was already seated and buckled and they had 4 people??

It was so embarrassing even though I wasn’t associated with them, because now I had to move across and sit on Chooch’s side while everyone in line was watching.

Oh wait! Speaking of the line. We saw the Korean family from the cave again! They looked so fucking tired.

We also saw a fat slob MAGA asshole in overalls and gulf of America shirt. Yup, sounds about right. Piece of shit.

Back to the ride, the adults across from us with the two kids (they were the grandparents, I think) did all of the talking and we just sat there and smiled. I’m not sure if the older couple on our side of the raft was with them or not. Rapid rides are so awkward because you almost inevitably have to ride with strangers and you’re all facing each other so it’s weird when you’re averse to small talk and SMILING AT STRANGERS.

At one point, the grandfather (who was actually sort of funny in a lame way) asked us if we had ridden this other boat ride there, one of those types of rides where you can shoot water at people or whatever. Chooch and I sort of glanced at each covertly because he kept saying he wanted to ride that and I said I didn’t want to because it was stupid so you know what that shit said to these strangers?

“No. I’m not allowed to ride that.”

I’M NOT ALLOWED TO RIDE THAT.

Everyone on the raft went quiet and it was so fucking awkward, like I’m some fucking Mommy Dearest who is still in control of my NINETEEN YEAR OLD SON. It was so uncomfortable that Chooch and I both let out unhinged giggles at the same time and then couldn’t stop. I was so afraid I was going to start doing the “IJBOL’ing in church” unstoppable laughter so that made it even worse. Luckily, our raft got rocked really hard at that moment so the big gush of water distracted everyone from whatever weird HOSTAGE SITUATION they thought was taking place between Chooch and me.

I seriously wanted to kill him, though!

Meanwhile, we got drenched head to toe but it was so fucking hot that we were completely dried off while STILL ON THE RIDE. Except for our shoes, which were trashed.

I don’t know if this section was just closed the last time we were there if we had completely missed it, but it was such a beautifully-themed area! And Chooch got his kiddie coaster cred.

If you go to Dollywood or SDC, it is IMPERATIVE that you get the cinnamon bread. IMPERATIVE. Part of the process, as my good friend Alyson would say.  I kept asking all day, “When are we getting cinnamon bread? Is it time for cinnamon bread yet?” Even after devoured our Fat American Buffet Lunch (and no, none of us went back for seconds, I forgot to add), I could have torn into one of these warm sugary loaves. They are one of those things that actually live up to the hype. I do prefer Dollywood’s though because the location is way more iconic and it has outdoor seating. This place was so small and crowded.

We ate about 1/2 of it and stopped before it turned bad for us, stomach-wise. Chooch was being miserable and “didn’t want any” and he ended up eating the rest from the backseat of the car the next day.

The ride he’s “not allowed” to ride.

OK OK OK, we rode Time Traveler again before we left and I’m so glad because we got the first car this time and it was a completely different experience. And I knew it would be too because there are so many different types of rides you can get on this since the cars are free-spinning. We did have to wait for about 20 minutes but it was worth it. And some guy a few people ahead of us was my brother Ryan’s doppelganger, even down to his voice. It was so crazy!

You had to be there.

And know my brother Ryan.

We didn’t wait for Henry as usual lol.

Anyway, I felt satisfied after this and it was still too grossly hot to care much about re-rides on anything else so we decided it was a good time to leave. I think it was around 6:30 by then and we had been at the park since nearly 9AM.

We had to stop at the candy store on the way out for some sweet treats for the road. I got a Lady Baltimore because I didn’t know what it was and it looked interesting. Welp, it tasted like sugary wax and after three days of sitting in the car Henry finally threw it out. It was just like….very dense white chocolate rolled with coconut but it had a…TASTE to it. Like “old person’s candy dish” taste. It left an unpleasant coating on my tongue too. I wish I could go back in  time and get a TIGER BUTTER instead – I didn’t even see that until now!

Luckily, Henry got the tried and true peanut brittle which lasted us days in the car much to Chooch’s chagrin. “HOW DO YOU STILL HAVE ANY OF THAT LEFT??” he screeched from the backseat at one point in our drive as Henry violently masticated a piece.

On the way out, we managed to get a picture at the front entrance sign which was MONOPOLIZED on the way in by a SDC photographer trying to make a dime off it. Henry white-knighted the park and said, “I mean, it IS their sign so they can monetize that if that want.”

OH OK Big Corp Hank.

I was hoping to just get a picture of either Chooch, me and Chooch, Henry and Chooch, whatever but then some family cut us off and asked if I could take their picture. So I did and then the dad was like, “I will take yours too” which was nice but I hate it when strangers take pictures of us because I feel even more awkward than usual! The exception was that time those young girls took pictures us on the Cheongyecheon on our first night in Seoul last year.

</3

Memories.

On the tram back to the parking lot. Counting how many more days they had of this, lol.

And by this I mean CELEBRATING MY BIRTHDAY EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK.

P.S. I fully prefer Dollywood over Silver Dollar City in case you needed to know for the thesis paper you’re writing about my life.

A really cool fact about Silver Dollar City is that is built on a giant cave, and that cave was the OG tourist attraction back in the day. In fact, it drew in such large crowds that the owners eventually began to add food stands and other amusements around it to give people things to do while they waited for their turn to enter the cave. Over time, this morphed into what we now know as Silver Dollar City! And the cave – Marvel Cave – is included in the price of admission so you’d be remiss to not take the 60-ish minute tour. Especially when it’s 100 degrees out – the cave is the PERFECT reprieve. As I write this, it’s 90 degrees in Pittsburgh, the first floor of my house has no A/C, and I am ready to dive back into this bitchin’ rock hut.

Now! When we were there in 2019, Chooch did the tour but Henry of the Land of the Broken Backs was not able to join us because in order to even get into the waiting room area, you have to be able to duck down and walk through this little cut out in the wall used to show you how low you’ll have to bend in one of the passages. Basically, the disclaimer above it says, “If you can’t walk  through this, don’t even bother lining up for the tour.” Henry looked at it and walked away without trying, LOL.

But this time, he was able to do it!

Chooch and I thought he was behind us the whole time as we strode through the gift shop to the entrance to the cave waiting room. We ducked through the fake hole and got in line with the handful of other rockheads who were waiting for the 12:00 tour. That’s when we realized that our Idiot Patriarch wasn’t with us! Because of course he had to go to the bathroom and supposedly told us but you know how well we listen. I mean, I hope you know by now.

Eventually, he found us and just casually strode over to the entrace (we had a good laugh watching him crunch his back as he bent down to step through the fake hole. I gotta see if I can find a picture of this so you know…

Yeah see – ducking through that is the only way you can enter. A prelude to what’s to come down in the abyss.

Now picture Henry dragging his ass through that LOL.

Anyway, Chooch and I were so annoyed because people had gotten behind us while we were waiting for Henry and we were aggressively trying to prevent him from line-jumping. But he just moseyed on past the people at the end of the line and joined us while we were yelling, “NO CUTTING! STAY BACK THERE!” Marvel Cave isn’t a “ride” so this wasn’t even technically a line just a gathering of people waiting for the guide.

The first thing I noticed after I took off my LINE POLICE cap was that Henry’s shirt was all wet, “allegedly” from the “sink” in the “bathroom.” MMmmm. It wasn’t just a couple of specks of waterdrops, no fam, this was a big block of wetness at the bottom of his shirt, perilously close to his pants.

“You’re so embarrassing!” Chooch and I screeched in tandem. Someone should go on vacation with us and clock how many times we say that to Henry. It’s gotta be in the triple digits.

(I originally spelled that “tripel” and now I want a Belgian beer.)

The cap on these tours is 40 or 45 people. Our group ended up being 30ish because a bunch of people peaced out during the DOOM AND GLOOM safety video (it was in a parody sense but also like, “No, seriously, please do not proceed if walking while hunched over through several moderately treacherous passages, LEAVE NOW. Go eat a famous Silver Dollar City skillet and watch a banjo show.”) but the family who had A BABY/TODDLER THAT NEEDED TO BE CARRIED STAYED. I was like, “OK, but sucks to be you.”

One of the big disclaimers was that the main way out of the cave is by a little mountain tram thing which apparently is very fickle and prone to “not starting.” If that happened on our tour, we’d have to turn around and walk all the way back the way we came and then back up the 500 steps we walked down to get to the bowels of the cave. The reason why I just shurgged this off is because this is exactly what happened in 2019 when Chooch and I toured Marvel Cave except that we knew this going in – the last part of the cave had flooded, I think is what the reasoning was at that time, so we were told up front that we’d have to loop back around and walk up the 500 steps to exit. So if it happened again this time, oh well.

BUT I REALLY WANTED TO RIDE THAT TRAIN FINALLY!!!

Nothing super incredible happened on this tour but I have to say that we stayed in the back of the group with a Korean family (the dad was in charge of shutting the door after we all made our way down the steps into the mouth of the cave) and a very old man who was so inspiring. He kept up with us all while taking pictures with a disposable camera. I was amazed by this man.

Just like in 2019, there was a professional photo op once we made it down the 500 steps. I went along with it but figured we wouldn’t purchase it at the end because I have been feeling Big Ug lately.

Again, not too much to report. I remembered some of the stories from last time. The history of this place is very cool. I felt like I was home again every time I’d hear the Korean family talk amongst themselves. I know, I know. It’s so cringey. But I have been talking about this in therapy, how I feel homesick for a place that isn’t even my home, and my therapist said, ‘That is actually so beautiful – maybe you were born there in a past life” and I said, “THAT IS WHAT I THINK TOO AND EVERYONE MAKES FUN OF ME!” and she said, “Well, you can tell everyone that your therapist thinks so too” SO THERE.

MY THERAPIST SAID.

(“Erin’s therapist is an enabler.” “Is ‘therapist’ Erin’s other personality?” “There goes Erin talking to herself again.”)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that here in the States, I will latch on to the tiniest sliver of it when it’s around me.

Don’t worry, I hate me too.

Guess what you guys?? This is a picture of us ON THE TRAIN THINGIE!!! We made it!

This is what the TRAIN THINGIE looks like from the gift shop window.

Anyway, all of the pictures were on display in souvenir envelopes. I figured, “Oh, I’ll just glance at ours and say no thanks” but then I was like, “Oh! I don’t look TOO bad, let’s buy it.” I thrust it into Henry’s chest and told him to go pay. He was acting like he didn’t want to buy the photo and I was like WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM.

“You can see the water on my shirt,” he mumbled. Chooch and I looked at the picture again and lost it. THIS MADE IT EVEN BETTER!

“How did you not notice it? It was the first thing I saw,” Henry sighed.

“Because I only look at myself, I don’t care what you two look like!” I wheezed, literally needing to pee so badly at this point. Why was this funny???

Oh god, I need to frame this and hang it near our GHOST BOAT photo from Wisconsin, lol.

Back in 2019, we went to Silver Dollar City during Thanksgiving break for their holiday festival thing. We had a nice time BUT!!! Henry had hurt his back the morning we were supposed to start the drive there and was unable to ride anything except for the carousel and a dark ride. And also, the temps were below average almost NONE of the coasters were running that day. The mine train, Outlaw Run (their RMC), and Fire In the Hole (indoor ride that counts as a coaster cred) were the only ones Chooch and I were able to ride that day and it was so painful to be that close to Time Traveler without getting on it, let me tell you.

I made sure to blast JACKIE BLUE on the drive there. I think it was about a 15 minute drive from our hotel in the big tourist trap area of Branson. The park opens real early – I think around 8:30am. They have the sections with all the rides roped off, but there’s a big courtyard-y area with shops and bakeries where you can get some morning sweet treats or a sit-down breakfast buffet.

OR GO TO CHURCH:

Chooch and I got trapped inside here because as we were trying to leave, a family came in and the mom was standing outside of the doorway taking pictures of them so Chooch and I had to dive to the side to avoid living in some strangers’ family picture for eternity. I got stuck in a pew next to a young girl who said, “It smells weird in here.”

“Kind of like pee,” I said, and she scrunched up her nose and agreed.

Chooch thought she had said it smells GOOD in there and was appalled that I countered with my pee comparison. It was funny at the time BUT I GUESS YOU HAD TO BE THERE.

Henry did not join us for this churchy pit stop.

But here he is afterward being embarrassing.

We had about 15 minutes before rope drop so we chose the artery that leads to Time Traveler and proceeded to stand amongst the other early birds in the ALREADY SWELTERING SUNLIGHT. Not even 9:30am yet and it was just going to get hotter. This time at least I wore a black shirt so my sweat couldn’t be seen. Ugh.

I forgot that SDC is one of those stupid ass patriotic parks where men have to remove their hats while we all have to endure the NATIONAL ANTHEM. This is excruciating ESPECIALLY in the current times, being a country led by a pedophile and Nazis. I stood with my arms crossed, scowling, as a bunch of asshole behind me sang along in reverence and then one big asshole hollered, “AMERICA!!!!!” at the end. Fuck off.

I will say that this definitely set the tone for me, at least for the first 1/3 of the day.

But! We finally got to ride Time Traveler! It wasn’t that long of a wait – maybe about 15 minutes once the ride actually opened, 20 minutes total. They assign seats here and we all got the second car.

Not to be a bitch, but the whole time I was expecting to be blown away and I just…wasn’t? Am I spoiled now? Am I losing interest in coasters?? I don’t know. But this coaster is supposed to be elite and I was just like, “OK?”

Then we walked over to Wildfire, but it was down, lol.

Wish we actually were from Canada, honestly.

Powder Keg!! I REALY enjoyed this one. What I did not enjoy was that the Fast Lane (I can’t remember what they call it there) definitely had priority. Chooch and I were waiting for the front row and lost two chances to go because of Fast Lane and I was livid when I saw that some of the Fast Lane people got right back in the Fast Lane line and got to ride it again before us! The bitch who took the front row had a beet red sweaty face so Chooch and I kept saying, “There she is, red face!” every time we saw her throughout the day. I hated her.

Fast passes are the worst creation ever. Do it like they do in Europe or don’t do it at all.

The park wasn’t even THAT crowded but Fast Lane made it feel like it was. At least for this coaster.

We probably only ended up waiting for 30 minutes and I guess it was worth it? I did enjoy it but the line was REALLY long by the time we got off so that was a one and done for us. It had a nice launch though.

I was very excited to get on Outlaw Run again! Especially since this would be Henry’s first time (sad that I can’t brag about having one extra RMC credit now compared to him – ugh). Now look, I watch lots of coaster content on YouTube because I am big fat loser so I was aware that there have been big complaints about how Outlaw Run runs now. I heard it’s gotten very rough, there’s a pothole at the bottom of the first drop, etc.

Even still, I was not prepared for this trainwreck it’s become. HOW is this the same coaster that Chooch and I straight-up marathoned in 2019??? Back then, it was a walk-on every time and we were shocked about that – an RMC with no lines?! Unheard of. On this day, it was also a walk-on (except that we wanted the backrow and it was on one-train ops so we did have to wait) on a fairy crowded day in July. But after that first drop, I could understand why. There is no way the general public like this coaster. When it’s too rough even for a thoosie? It was actually heartbreaking how bad this coaster has become and I was sad that this was the version of it that Henry had to experience. We all hated it. It wasn’t even worth riding in another row for science.

PLEASE, Silver Dollar City, ask RMC to come back and fix it! They should have been working on that instead of refurbing Fire in the Hole!

Which, speaking of, we rode next. The line was long because I think it was actually broken down when we got there because the line just wasn’t moving at all. Meanwhile, there was a mom and her young daughter in front of us, and then an old man in front of them. He turned around and started talking to the mom and the girl (mostly the girl and it was fucking creepy – he had pervy Farmer Jed vibes). THEN he did the dread “OVER HERE YALL!” wave, summoning his wife and young girl who he introduced as HIS DAUGHTER MARY and I fucking swear to god she was like 10 and this man was in his 70s. Henry didn’t hear this part but when I told him later, he kept insisting that she was probably his granddaughter BUT I AM TELLING YOU, HE SAID DAUGHTER.

Then!!! He kept shouting, “BILL! BILL! WE’RE OVER HERE!” and I was like, “AW FUCK NO” when I saw that Bill had numerous other people with him. Bill was standing near the entrance to the ride and yelled back that they were still waiting on someone in the bathroom. Bill kept saying, “We’ll just ride it separately” but Farmer Jed was like, “NO YOU WILL CUT PAST EVERYONE IN LINE AND RIDE WITH US FOR GODS SAKE.”

I was like peeling my skin off at this point because LINEJUMPING IS CAUSE FOR REMOVAL FROM THE PARK YOU FUCKING MOUNTAIN DWELLER. GO HOME AND DRINK YOUR MOONSHINE WHILE SHINING YOUR HUBCAP COLLECTION WITH YOUR SNOTTY RAG! And take your weird ass daughter Mary in her church dress with you! I felt like she had a tag on her somewhere that said Product of Incest.

I kept saying, “This is bullshit, let’s just get out of line, I don’t want to deal with this” but Henry and Chooch were too busy being poisoned by the sun to care.

Then the line started moving at a pretty consistent pace which definitely led me to believe that the ride must have been down that whole time (good ol’ RMC). The switchback eventually brought us back around to the entrance before the line wound its way inside the building (Fire in the Hole is a dark ride) so now we were directly across from where Bill and his clan had been waiting for the pissing member of their gang. Perfect timing – they were all now accounted for and JUST started to get into line when Farmer Jed was like, “JUST COME UNDER THE BAR HERE!!!” meaning they would have skipped out on the whole outdoor section of the line, cutting at least 50 people. There was a lot of hem and hawing on Bill’s part, and I made STRONG EYE CONTACT with who I can ony imagine was Bill’s wife and slowly shook my head no in the most threatening way I could muster without also having a switchblade to flick open and close.

Bill said, “Naw, we ain’t gon’ do that” and then he and his family proceeded to GET INTO THE BACK OF THE LINE!!!!! So Farmer Jed’s old hag said, “LET’S JUST GO WITH THEM THEN” and ducked under the bar and left with Farmer Jed and Mary from the Hills Have Eyes in tow!

I WAS ELATED!!!! Chooch said, “See?? And you wanted to leave. But it all worked out.” He said it in the most inyerface way imaginable though so my smug joy was shortlived.

Anyway, we rode it. It was fine. We got stuck just outside of the station though because someone on the train before ours had puked AND IT TURNS OUT IT WAS THE LITTLE GIRL THAT FARMER JED WAS TRYING TO GROOM IN FRONT OF US!

And on that note, I will end PART ONE. But just know that I really fucking hate linejumpers so much. Especially in this new age we live in where no one wants to confront anyone for fear of becoming a viral video or getting stabbed.

After being Lookie Lous at the St. Louis Arch last Sunday morning, we continued on to Six Flags in Eureka, Missouri. I think it was about 30 minutes outside of St. Louis, and my first impression was that it seemed kind of beautiful from the road, for being a Six Flags park. It’s nestled right at the base of a fluffy green hill/mountain:

(I snagged this shot from Photos at Six Flags St. Louis | Parkz – Theme Parks, no clue who to credit but it’s not my picture.)

We kept our expectations ultra-low with this park. Six Flags in general is meh – when thoosies say “We had a Six Flags day,” it’s not generally a good thing. Most of the locations lack soul, just tons of ugly asphalt, no heart, massive and unruly lines, employees putting in minimal effort. The DC Comics IP gets really old. Some have outstanding coasters though. This one….well, lol.

My second impression was that the entrance was beautiful! Minus the guy who saddled up as soon as I took this picture, lol.

Before I get into the rides, I want to say that yes, it was unbearably hot on this day too. Like, I was sweating through my shirt an embarrassing amount before we even rode the first ride. However, this did seem to keep the crowds at bay so literally everything we rode was either a complete walk-on or a station wait. We actually spent more time walking through through the empty queues to the station than actually waiting to get on any coaster in the park that day. That being said, this played a HUGE ROLE in my overall thoughts of the day. Because in the end, this day was so memorable to me in the best way and it could have been completely opposite if we were there on a mild-weathered day with huge crowds. Give me the humidity over long lines any day!!

We started off with American Thunder – a woodie that again, I had low expectations for. We got right into the back row while Henry took the front seat and thought he was so cool for that too.

YO this was surprisingly good! Not too rough at all. I saw someone call it “glass smooth” and I would certainly not take it that far but it was definitely enjoyable and I would also say re-rideable too. Jumping ahead here, but we should have just re-ridden it immediately because all of the other coasters in the park got progressively worse and by the end, no one was physically stoked to ride ANYTHING twice, lol!

On the exit path, some girl in bright pink shorts was apparently desperate to get past me but I didn’t notice her until Chooch physically moved me over. She ran past me so fast that I barely registered her. In every park, there is always that one person/group that pops up over and over again and this time, it was Pink Shorts. We saw her cutting the line for the next ride….

I was most excited for Mr Freeze!! It’s kind of iconic because it has a backward launch! There is a Six Flags in Texas that also has one, but they switched it so that the launch is now forward and there have been rumors of this happening to this one too. So, I felt a certain type of urgency to get on this before that happens.

Here’s a POV:

I LOVED this but shoooooo, this took it out of me, pals.

“Did you hear me screaming??” I asked Henry as we exited.

“That’s a stupid question,” he muttered.

I was sopping with sweat at this point, and cold sweat to boot thanks to the fear that Mr Freeze instilled in me. Launches always get me!!

Chooch and I rode a wild mouse-type coaster after this but Henry was like “I’M GOOD” and sat on a bench. He didn’t even take a picture of us though!?

I had no opinion on that coaster – it was hot. It spun. It dropped us back off in the station. I peeled my moist thighs off the seat. The end.

I wanted to take our #carouselfie immediately after this before my hair got too wet (at one point it looked like I had come from the water park, you guys. It was really that bad) but Chooch got side-tracked by Bugs Bunny and then we missed the carousel line cut-off and had to wait for an entire rotation which is actually kind of annoying – who the fuck has time to wait in line for the carousel?? Had to get the shot though.

That sheer kimono thing came in clutch to hide all of my absolutely savage sweat stains.

Interestingly, the carousel was playing some bizarre fight sequence, assuming it was to make us feel like we were in some type of battle? It was jarring! The revolution before ours had regular calliope music playing!

In his dreams, he’s The Boss.

Well guys, this was A W F U L lol. Like, so bad that it was actually a HIGHLIGHT for me because of how fucking hilarious it was. I mean, ALL of us were OOFing and UGHing our way through this nightmarescape and it was a long ass ride too. Now we knew going into this that it was going to be bad – it’s infamous for being rough and shitty. The majority of thoosies have strong opinions on how much they hate it, but there are a small handful of The Boss Apologists out there. I honestly thought that while it was rough, chaotic, potentially hazardous even??, it was also memorable for being these things. It was an EXPERIENCE. Like getting a bad tattoo.

We have ridden less rough coasters that we hated and will never ride again but also have no lasting memory of. This actually felt bonding, like a simulated car crash that we experienced together as a family and survived and can now laugh about it. Does this make sense?? Did The Boss knock some of the remaining sense out of me?? All I can tell you is that while I had immediate bruises forming on my person, I was also laughing so hard that my ribs were hurting (OK, the jackhammering contributed to some of that pain). Honestly though, even Chooch was wheezing. This ride was SO BAD that it was good?? But would I ever ride it again? OK, definitely not that same day but I think I probably would if we ever went back.

Yeah, I said it. Does that make me a Boss Apologist too? Maybe. I’m OK with that.

FUCK why didn’t I buy a Boss shirt?!

(I just said this out loud while Chooch is in the kitchen and he said, “Wow, why are you so obsessed with the Boss?” I mean….)

Apparently, there used to be a helix near the end that was removed – I would have loved to have experienced that!

After that, Chooch and I rode some kids’ coaster which was the only time we had to wait in line. (There was a guy behind me wearing pants and a coat and that is the only thing I remember about this – being so repulsed at his outerwear choices on this sweltering day). That coaster was fine, bland and not memorable though. Then Chooch got to spin some wheel for children, landed on Osage and won a small plastic neon pink horse. We were like “Osage, whatever that means” and then it came up numerous times throughout our Missouri portion of the trip and now we know that Osage is a Native American tribe – knowledge! SEE?? ROAD TRIPS ARE EDUCATIONAL. It helps when you’re stupid and have lots to learn anyway.

I admitted that I didn’t think this Boomerang was the worst one I’ve ridden and Chooch was appalled by this. “REALLY? Because I was thinking it was definitely the worst one I’ve ridden.”

(Also I need to quit using this particular Hipstamatic filter on pictures that feature people because it makes us look like we have skin diseases.)

We still had THREE MORE shitty coasters left:

• another wooden one (Screamin’ Eagle) which was the last one Henry did for the day because that one was also terrible and from here on out, he sent Chooch and me to ride the wooden ones first so we could report back. He just told me last night that he pretty much had a headache for days after riding the Boss lol.
• a fucking Vekoma SLC called Ninja that had a pretty cool entrance – I was going to take a picture of it afterward but the headbanging knocked that thought of my head so I forgot all about it. Here’s someone else’s picture because I also just realized that the Boomerang was the last picture I took anyway lol:

(THIS IS NOT WORTH THE WAIT, NOT EVEN A LITTLE – luckily it was a walk-on for us)

• And last but not least, of course this location has a Batman clone. No notes on that.

All in all, it took us about three hours to get park completion (just the coasters). The longest we waited for anything was the kids coaster – about 10 minutes. I didn’t HATE this park. In fact, I thought it had some charm and in a really masochistic twist, I would actually kind of like to get a night ride on the Boss someday!? Am I crazy? Maybe in the fall so I can wear a padded coat.

Anyway, we opted to cut out of here early and start our drive to Branson so that we could be refreshed for a day at Silver Dollar City on Monday!

Our first amusement park of this summer’s chaotic coaster road trip was Beech Bend in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This is a very small park that probably isn’t on the radar of the general population unless they live in the area, but coaster enthusiasts (those cray-cray thoosies) will go out of their way for it because of the wooden coaster – Kentucky Rumbler.

There are two other small coasters here, and a dark ride, among a collection of your standard carnival-type rides like a Music Express and a Scat 2. We knew this wasn’t going to be a full day park by any means so we were content with rolling up around 3:30PM last Saturday, after driving since 8AM from Pittsburgh ugh, and paying the “evening rate.” PLUS HENRY GOT THE SENIOR DISCOUNT LOLOLOLOLOL. Chooch and I were calling him Our Senior after that. :)

My first impression was – yay, free parking! The parking lot was a large grassy expanse and so much better than your typical asphalt slab.

Second impression was that it reminded me of a much less run-down Camden Park in West Virginia. You got that same rural vibe and glorified carnival-type rides, but they were much better maintained and the park itself had lot of beautiful landscaping and flowers. Also had Waldameer vibes, a little.

Kentucky Rumbler was the entire reason this has been a bucket list park for quite some time. It’s always a crap shoot when it comes to woodies, but I had heard such glowing reviews for this one so I got in line with confidence. My first impression was that the ride had two ride ops who seemed to genuinely want to be there – they were friendly and chatty with the riders!

Also, it was a station wait!

Second impression was that this coaster WAS AWESOME. It surpassed my expectations! All I was hoping for was something that wouldn’t jackhammer me, and this was as smooth as a violent woodie can possibly be, IYKYK. Our first ride was backseat and we were SCREAMING! I kept calling the first drop “the swirl” though, and I am certain that this was bigly getting on Chooch’s last nerve. I was very giddy – imagine being in the car all day and then let loose to ride a wild, bucking bronco of a wooden coaster. Shoooo.

Totally re-rideable too, even for Henry! What a gem tucked away in rural Kentucky, honest to god. And honestly, this set the bar high for the rest of our trip. I was expecting the FIRST COASTER of a weeklong road trip to be this exceptional, but here we are, a week later and I’m still thinking about it longingly and running my fingertips over the Kentucky Rumbler magnet that now adorns my fridge.

We would come back to this side of the park later to get some more rides on it, but first we had to acquire the other two coaster creds in the park…

…and terrorize Chooch with selfie requests.

Not pictured, but this was in line for the SBF Visa Spinning coaster which are a dime a dozen these days, especially at the really small parks like this one, indoor family fun centers, boardwalks, etc. Nothing to write home about.

Oh shit, now that I’m looking at this picture, Chooch and I rode the Starship 4000 later that day and it was my first time riding one of these in A MINUTE. I sincerely think the last time was probably the Butler County Fair?? In fact, I can’t remember ever riding one of these with Chooch, so that was exciting! Until it started whirring and I quickly remembered just how uncomfortable these are, especially considering it was about 10 degrees hotter inside that space prison as it was outside, and I can’t remember it physically hurting my sternum?? Like, I honestly thought something was going to crack inside of me and I was psychically pleading for the fucking cycle to end.

The carousel was right across from the spinning coaster though and I was like, “PUHLEASE can we take the carousel now because I get any sweatier???” I quit using deodorant with aluminum in it because I’m so afraid of cancer here there and everywhere, so I was fucking sweating like a lumberjack through my shirt. It was pathetic. But good god, it was like standing on a frying pan set on the sun that day and would not get any better until halfway into the week.

Anyway, they’re smiling because this was only the first carouselfie of the trip and neither of them had to take the picture. This doesn’t last long LOL.

OK I was already stoked that this place has a dark ride, but this one blew me away!! It was old-school, which I love, BUT it had a lot of extra auditory effects which heightened the experience by a lot and seriously creeped me out in the best way. And not only was the ride experience totally memorable but the ride op – LYNDA LOVE – was so adorable and personable! There was a family that got in line straight from the water park, and the women were unfortunately only wearing coverups over their bathing suits so Lynda had to turn them away because pants are required on all the rides there. There was a bit of a language barrier and Lynda turned to us and said forlornly, “I wish I would speak their language.” We asked Chooch if they were speaking Spanish and, not once looking up from his phone, shrugged and said, “I don’t know, probably.” And Henry said, “Well, couldn’t you tell them what she said?”

“I mean, yeah probably. But I think they got the gyst,” he said in his patented “can’t be bothered” tone. Thanks, Chooch! Always so willing to go the extra mile.

Anyway, I screamed a lot in the haunted house, in case you were wondering. Also, it was air-conditioned in there and felt amazing. Lynda’s parting words to every car was, “Enjoy the a/c!” This was after giving everyone instructions on what to do if the ride breaks down so I guess that happens frequently.

Normally I would have been ALL ABOARD for Scat2 but it was so hot and humid that even now as I think back to this, I want to vomit. Hard pass, Scat2.

The Wild Mouse was the last credit we needed. In line, I instructed Henry and Chooch that we had to sit all three together, no spaces in between any of us, to ensure maximum spinning. I legit said this so many times that I was getting on my own nerves.

There was a single ride ahead of us and I was NO GODDAMIT because I thought for sure the ride op was going to send us all in the same car, but he sent the single ride by himself! Then he came over to me, squinted at my shirt, and yelled, “PIERCE THE VEIL?! WHAT’S THAT, SOME KIND OF ROCK BAND??” I said yes and Chooch was irritated. “I wouldn’t call them ROCK,” he music snobbed as we slid into the car.

Yeah, I know, but the dude was like 70, letting him believe they’re a rock band isn’t hurting anyone!

MEANWHILE!!! Henry the Dissenter didn’t slide all the way in and was about to leave an empty seat between him and Chooch!! Right as the ride op was about to lower the bar, I screamed, “NO!” and made Henry slide over a seat, which made him grumble. The WHOLE WAY up the lift hill, I berated him for not listening to me re: seat assignments.

“I was listening! I just forgot!”

“FROM 2 MINUTES AGO???” I screamed around Chooch, who was willing himself to astral project back to Philly.

Yo, thank god Henry had enough time to swap seats because that was an INSANE Wild Mouse lap. I mean, we were spinning extra on the course but when we got to the brake run, we sat there for a good minute spinning like the Spaceship 4000 – I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath and was near tears.

When the ride op finally brought us back to the station, he was laughing too. “THAT’S why she wanted you to move seats!” he said to Henry, who just frowned in response. ;)

“Do you want to ride that?” I joked to Chooch.

“The AMBULANCE?” Chooch cried. I mean, I was gesturing to the little kids truck ride under that pavilion, but wow, get dark with it, Chooch.

There was big, dreary warehouse-type structure with “games” and a snack bar, and also “party rooms.” It was pretty bleak in there so I think Beech Bend should work on make that area more festive and less “this is where Farmer Beechbend used to store the feed and hoes.” I used the bathroom in there – it was two stalls, super tiny and HOT – and a mom was in the stall next to me struggling to get her kid to take a shit. This was the second time that day that I had an unnerving public restroom experience with a mom and her unruly child.

Meanwhile, Henry bought himself a soft pretzel and Chooch and I ate most of it. :)

I really thought that said “Cabananas 1 -19” and “Cannabis 1 – 5”.

Did you know that I can’t ride pirate ships anymore as an adult? I can ride the most extreme coasters and spinny shit, but pirate ships will knock me out. It’s the rocking motion – side to side or front to back, it makes me nauseous. :(

We did not ride this janky backyard log flume and I lowkey regret it even though we saw one of the logs get stuck at the top of the tallest drop, lol.

We spent the last part of our day lapping Kentucky Rumbler. Station wait every single time – could have been a walk-on even if we weren’t such bitches for the backseat.

Ew, on the way out, we stopped to watch some game that was being played on this stage and I DID NOT APPRECIATE THE WAY THIS BABY WAS LOOKING AT ME.

Chooch said that it looked like his friend’s brother Roman, but I thought he said, “That baby looks like it’s broken” and I screamed OMG IT DOES.

Delightful swings!

Anyway, the park closed at 7 (ON A SATURDAY? IN JULY?!) but we managed to do all we needed to do in about 2 hours – plus, we were overheated and STARVED. I would definitely stop back here if we’re ever out that way though because Kentucky Rumbler is just THAT good.

Hello from a new-to-us state! I don’t know why but going to Iowa was one of the  things I was most excited about when planning this trip. Just because, why Iowa, you know? Like, who goes to Iowa for vacation. But it just so happens that there are some cool amusement parks here!

Anyway, we spent most of the day at World of Fun in Kansas City, Missouri after checking out the NOT-Victorian in Branson. It was another hotter than Hell day. 95 degrees I think but the “feels like” was 108. It felt every bit that hot too.

We left there around 5:30, (they closed at 7:00 but we had already done everything we needed to do, plus get re-rides our faves) and stopped at ZOMBIE BURGER in Des Moines. We made it there around 8:15 and I’ll be so for real here, it wasn’t all that – just a gimmicky place capitalizing off of horror by decorating with zombie art and naming the food after horror movies. But I buy into that shit, PLUS they had a veg section. I had homed in the Negan burger, which was the Zombie Burger’s own veggie nut burger and that sounded fantastic plus, NEGAN.

“I hope they actually have it, or I’ll cry,” I said, because, tragically, “Sorry, we don’t have that anymore” follows me from restaurant to restaurant.

“HOW?” Chooch dead-panned. “Do you even have anything left? You’ve been crying all day.”

Wow. He is such a good son. The best boy.

Anyway, YES THEY DID HAVE IT.

Henry got a beer and I had some sips. It was a WarPigs Foggy Geezer IPA. I created a monster with him and IPAs. Bro, branch out a little.

The Negan! It was good – my favorite part was actually the bun. It was very soft and fluffy and I enjoyed it very much, thank you for asking, omg you’re too kind but no I don’t think I’ll be starting a bun-reviewing periodical at this time.

Bathroom graffiti.

Decor was really on point.

Oddly, a baseball game was on the TVs at the bar – if I’m going to a zombie-themed eatery, I’m expecting zombie classics playing on a loop. But cook on with your baseball game, I guess.

Afterwards, I didn’t want to immediately go to the hotel. We’ve  never been in Des Moines before and I wanted to see some of it! Henry signed and drove toward the river at my command. There was parking along the bridge! So we did that and Henry thought I was just going to get out and take a quick picture but turned into, “Let’s just walk to the edge of the bridge and back” which then bled into, “I want to just walk a block down there and get a picture of that sign.”

“The TRAVELERS SIGN?” Chooch scoffed in a who cares tone.

“Yeah, I like it,” I shouted back. LET. ME. LIVE.

We saw whatever the fuck this is on the way, and the CASEYS CENTER – a venue named after Henry’s new favorite gas station that he has stopped at a hundred times on this trip so far. Also, there was a baseball stadium with a game happening and Chooch found out it was their minor league team, Cubs. I wanted it to be the Cornstalks.

Come on, it was a cool sign!

I didn’t look to see what this is, I assume an art museum or something.

After walking back on the other side of the bridge, I determined I was satisfied and that we could go. But then I saw what HAD to have been the Capitol Building peeking out in the distance. I SCREAMED when Henry got onto the highway because I thought he understood by my cries of childlike wonder that I wanted to get CLOSER to the Capitol. So, he muttered under his breath and veered off onto a ramp back into the downtown area. Yayayayayayay!

Oh, and I should mention that there was a wicked lightning storm happening, which got way worse and has since turned into a storm-storm as I sit here in the hotel writing this.

I just really thought this was so beautiful and am so happy that we got to see it at night!

This is the Iowa Soldiers and Sailors Monument a/k/a “Iowa’s Most Scandalous Statue”:

LOL – this is on Roadside America so I was stoked to get to mark another idiotic thing as “been there.”

So, that part of the night was very nice – I like when we get a chance to actually see parts of the cities we visit for roller coasters, especially because I can’t foresee any other reason that would have brought me there. And from what I saw, Des Moines is beautiful!

Then the night took a turn when we drive the 15 minutes to Altoona Iowa to check into our hotel, which ended up being a Best Western directly across from Adventureland with a ton of truckers parked in the lot and the area was just bad vibes all around. When Chooch and I  were waiting for the elevator, one of the aforementioned truckers  walked past and mumbled, “Welcome to the shit hole” to us. WTF.

Then we got to our floor and some weird child-thing came slithering out of its room at the same time as someone from the floor above took off running back and forth and then as soon as we opened the door to our room, there was maniacal pounding from the room above.

“Nope,” I said and walked right on out. Henry was in the hallway at this point and I said, “I’m not staying here,” as I walked past him to the elevator. Just felt it in my gut. The trucker’s ominous non-greeting, the stampeding, the blah room. I couldn’t do it. Not on the eve of my birthday. This of course resulted in a big argument in the car, but now we are ready for bed in a nice, clean, reputable Hilton:

Sory. But sometimes I need to be fucking spoiled, and I don’t care. I wasn’t sleeping in that other place. And for as much as we harped on Henry over the Branson hotel, that one was clean and quiet at least. No frills at all but we slept well and it legit felt like we were the only ones there. Not a peep from the other rooms.

I don’t know what the plan is for tomorrow. The weather looks iffy – storms and rain. Not sure if the park will even be open. If it’s still lightning the way it is tonight, I don’t know what we will end up doing. :/

Dear Blog,

It’s me, the Obsessive One. The Finnicky Fixator. The Alice Down the Rabbit Hole. Circling back on my ELUSIVE BEER CAN mission from several weeks ago.

You might remember that Henry and I had purchased a limited edition Penn Brewery six-pack in collaboration with Kennywood and I was so stoked on it. Not only did I LOVE the can art, but the beers were actually pretty good too. I liked ALL SIX varieties which was a big deal for this Picky Peggy (sorry, once I start, I can’t stop). I had a vision of cutting and flattening the cans to make a picture frame and was super excited about this. If you know me, you know I am a hugely sentimental person, I love souvenirs, mementos, memorabilia, etc. ESPECIALLY when it involves amusement parks!

But then a week later, we met my sister and her husband at Penn Brewery and this is where a wrench was thrown in my plans. First of all, we had a shitty experience as far as the server and most of the beers went. Maybe it was the Kennywood cans that were hyping up on the other Penn Brewery flavors in my mouth, but the ones we actually got on draft on there were mid at best. The lemon shandy especially was extremely bland, like Lysol without the lemon scent.

On the table was one of those little plastic stands with their “specials” slipped inside. On the other side was an ad for the Kennywood six-pack, with a picture of it in the middle and then all of the individual cans bordering it – 4 on both sides.

You might be thinking, “But 4+4 = 8, Erin. How is that a six-pack?” THAT WAS MY QUESTION TOO, YOU GUYS. I might hate math but I didn’t suck at it in school. I held the sign close to my nose so that I could really scrutinize it and saw that there were TWO BEERS not included in the six-pack: one called a Potato Smash and the other one I couldn’t see very well but could tell that it was themed on the now-defunct dark ride, Le Cachot. And unfortunately it was the dreaded lemon shandy, LOL. I didn’t care though – I NEEDED BOTH OF THESE NOW THAT I KNEW THEY EXISTED.

Henry was going to ask out server but I stopped him because she was seriously the worst and acted like she hated us, so god forbid we ask her to do more of her job. So, he went to the bar and had an equally abysmal interaction with the bartender, who did sell him a six-pack of the Potato Smash one, but basically gaslit him into believing that the other one didn’t exist in the Kennywood can. She kept trying to push their regular brewery cans of lemon shandy on him like we were actually buying this for the beer itself.

As.

If.

I was in a spiral and kept arguing with him the entire weekend that this couldn’t be true.

“WHY WOULD THEY HAVE THAT AD ON THE TABLE WITH 8 CANS IF THERE ARE ONLY 7???” I kept crying, and Henry was like, “Jesus Lord in Heaven, beam me up. I’ve put in my time and I wish to now clock out.”

Hey, Sus – you stay out of this.

We kept checking some local distributors thinking that maybe they would have it because another bartender said something about shipping them out, etc. But we came up empty.

Not one to be deterred that easily, I decided to send the brewery a message on IG, in hopes that someone who actually knows what goes on there would be the one to respond. I explained my dilemma, “lay awake at night thinking of this mystery can” etc. – I gave it my all. I laid all of my neuroses on the table. I’m just a girl, on the other side of your Instagram DM, freaking the FUCK out because now I have an UNEVEN NUMBER OF BEER CANS FOR MY ART PROJECT!!!

No, I have never been diagnosed as OCD but sometimes I wonder. I also think I am on the spectrum a ‘lil bit. (Aren’t we all??)

They replied a day later and said that YES! THE KENNYWOOD LEMON SHANDY CANS ARE AT THE BREWERY! I mean, I made sure to emphasize that I needed the KENNYWOOD CANS, THE ONES WITH THE LE CACHOT ART, and their response acknowledged this. .

I sent Henry out to get it.

And they were closed.

This was a fail on his part, though!! He should have checked their hours! I will give Penn Brewery a pass on this one.

But then he went the next day and the same lady bartender from the day we were there with Amy tried AGAIN to give him the basic cans and he was like, “No the Kennywood ones” and she told him they didn’t exist! AND HE WAS LIKE OK BYE AND LEFT!? No push back!?!!?!?!?

I was livid. I sent Penn Brewery a reply and told them what happened and they read my message and never responded!!!!!!!

SO THEN I MADE JANNA MESSAGE THEM ABOUT IT AND THEY NEVER RESPONDED TO HER AT ALL.

OK, I was really hating on this place at this point and I felt actual sickness in my stomach when I would think about how now my project was going to be lopsided and forever incomplete in my heart since I KNEW that there could be an 8th design out there!!!

HOW DID THEY HAVE A PICTURE OF SOMETHING THAT DIDN’T EXIST?!!?!?

THE MATH WAS NOT MATHING!!!!!

Eventually though I told myself that I had to let it go. I have never been more frustrated over something this small and non-life altering! This stupid beer can was living rent free in my head but I’m about to be charging this squatter back rent!!

2 weeks have since gone by since Janna messaged them with no response. I had actually given up. But this morning, I opened Instagram and one of my fave local cafes posted a picture of a guy painting a mural in one of their locations. I was like, “That looks nice” and then I clicked on the artist’s Instagram and didn’t have to scroll very far before I saw THAT HE IS THE ONE WHO DESIGNED THE KENNYWOOD CANS!!!!! (In hindsight, the cans DO say his name but it is VERY TINY and I only just noticed it now!)

He has a video where he is in the brewery watching them can the Jack Rabbit Wheeeeat and it says, “Get this and 7 others at Penn Brewery!”

SEVEN.

OTHERS.

I mean, he should know, right????

So I commented on his post and told him my sob story and he said that yes, the mythical 8th can is available AT THE BREWERY.

It just so happened that we were having lunch today with Todd and Brittany in the Strip so since we were already out that way-ish, I made Henry swing by the brewery on the way home.

“I WILL GO IN MYSELF AND HANDLE THIS,” I hissed, and Henry of course was like, “Thank god.”

“Yes, we have that,” the bartender replied, no hesitation, when I explained in CLEAR ENGLISH that I was looking for the KENNYWOOD CANS of the lemon shandy.

“OMG! Can I please have a six-pack?” I giddily asked, in disbelief of how easy this was panning out to be.

He came back WITH THE PENN BREWERY CANS.

“No….” I began to say, and he cut me off to explain that this was the same lemon shandy found at Kennywood, just in the Penn Brewery cans.

So, once again, I used my CIVIL, POLITE WORDS to explain that I was looking for the CANS WITH THE KENNYWOOD ART.

“Oh, you have to buy the variety pack,” he said. “You’ll only get one can of the shandy, but it will be the Kennywood art.”

“No, that’s not one of the ones in the variety pack,” I DEMURELY and CUTESY-ly argued.

He retrieves a six-pack to prove his point and immediately says, “….oh.”

“Yeah,” I said, relishing the moment he realized that the lemon shandy WAS NOT in the variety pack.

I then argued that I was told by THE ARTIST that this can exists and that it’s available AT THE BREWERY. I was NOT leaving until he went back and checked again. Like, bro – can I just come back there? Can you just let me look? Are you just like, glancing around? Opening the junk drawer halfway? What is going on here?!?

He did go into the back again and if I’m not mistaken, he retreated with a bit of ‘tude in his stride that I did not appreciate.

But guess what you guys? HE CAME BACK AND PLACED MY HOLY GRAIL ONTO THE BAR IN FRONT OF ME.

This was like my own version of the motherfucking DaVinci Code. The trials and tribs I went through! All that was missing was a pair of sphinxes asking me a riddle.

“This was the last one,” he said, explaining that the rest of the batch was sent off to the distributors. Are you kidding me? If I start seeing these everywhere, I’m going to lose my mind. Regular people be walking into Giant Eagle and snagging a six-pack of Le-mon Cachot Shandy not knowing what those before them went through to acquire this bounty.

The worst part is that THIS BEER SUCKS!! But yo—-that can design. Can you even believe it?  It is so good! I loved Le Cachot when it was still around! Paul Haggerty, you are a brilliant artist.

This was the other one that wasn’t available in the variety pack. If you have never been to Kennywood, they are famous for their Potato Patch fries.

I love that this one, named after the Thunderbolt, has a Golden Nugget ice cream on it!

RIP Log Jammer.

THIS shandy was actually really delectable.

And that’s my story about how I obtained all 8 cans and will never go back to Penn Brewery again. (Unless they do a Kpop series one day.)

We used to go to Kennywood every Father’s Day because for some reason it is traditionally uncrowded there that day. I guess most dads want to stay home and grill meats, who knows. I’m not a dad, I don’t know what goes on in Dad Minds.

It ended up being not crowded, per the norm! And Chooch had already said he was bored before we even entered the park so that was a great start, status quo, welcome home, etc.

Steel Curtain finally reopened this season after having been closed all of last season and….most of 2023 I think? I quit caring, to be honest. Kennywood does this thing where they buddy up with a coaster manufacturer and agree to have a prototype / first of its kind added to the park and then it ends up being a maintenance nightmare, but whatever – you do you, K-wood.

Oh! I can’t believe I never mentioned this on here but Kennywood and its sister parks were recently bought by Herschend, the owner of DOLLYWOOD AND SILVER DOLLAR CITY. I am so stoked on this. Do I wish that Kennywood could go back to being family-owned? Of-fucking-course. But this last corporation that owned them (Palace) made some real stupid choices. I’m hoping that Herschend will put some theming in, get some better food up in that piece (I’m thinking of YOU, Dollywood’s famous cinnamon bread,  but then again – it might lose its novelty if we’re able to have it whenever we want here in Pittsburgh!), and AHEM – RMC MAYBE??? We know Herschend has a good relationship with RMC! (OK, Lightning Rod might have tarnished that relationship BUT they were still invited to re-track Fire in the Hole at Silver Dollar City, so maybe??)

Sorry. Tangent.

LOL Henry had to ride with some other dad. They immediately started talking, too, and Chooch and I were dying. Then Chooch realized he had allowed himself to share a moment with me and went back to being sullen and bored.

Anyway, Steel Curtain is still good! I didn’t notice the new trims that much, but Henry said that his ride was super bumpy but maybe that’s just because his brain is bumpy.

KANGAROO.

Honestly, nothing that exciting happened all day so this is mostly just going to be pictures.

We didn’t even really ride that much because we were all tired for various reasons (Henry and I had a late Friday night and then the No Kings protest most of Saturday, and Chooch is just perpetually tired because he’s of a certain age + spent all of Saturday on a train home). But we did get some Phantom rides in and I can confirm that it is STILL one of my all time favorite coasters.

Then Chooch guilted me into riding Black Widow with him and I cannot stress enough how much I dislike this ride.

They assign you a number when you walk on and are very serious about everyone sitting in their assigned seat. They were going in order starting from 1 and I ended up being 15 but then they skipped to 20 for Chooch. I know it was weight / balance thing because the park wasn’t crowded enough for them to fill every seat on each cycle, but it was still annoying because I didn’t want to ride at all and now I had to sit alone. Then they moved him and some of the people next to him clear on the other side!

I’m not going to lie, I thought I was going to throw up as the ride was coming to a stop. I was hungry and also definitely needed water so that just exacerbated things and I am totally certain that all of the casual bystanders could tell that I was having a bad time, lol. The ride operator even said, “How was that ride?? Some of you looked like you were having fun, others….did not.”

HEY, THE LITTLE NEXT TO ME ALSO HATED IT AND WAS YELLING AT HER BROTHER THE WHOLE TIME FOR MAKING HER RIDE IT, SO THERE.

DARK SKIES.

OMG he’s so happy to be home with mommy and daddy.

We didn’t get a Golden Nugget! But we have season passes so I’m sure I will get my Gol’Nug fix at some point this summer.

That stupid Bites & Pints thing was happening again so Henry bought a dumb tasting card and there was next to nothing for non-meat eaters, I’ll tell you that much. Chooch and I would have been extra-screwed if we were full vegan. As it were, we could only really eat the dessert options at nearly every country’s booth. I was PISSED at Italy because it looked like ALL THREE OPTIONS were meatless so I was stoked and asked for the flatbread that had peaches and cheese on it, I forget the exact kind. But then when I saw in under the heat lamp thing, it looked like it had MEAT CRUMBLES on it so I asked the guy who punched my taster card if it did and he emphatically said no. But some woman next to him overheard and said, “Yes, it does – pancetta.”

UGH!!! The description did NOT mention that AT ALL. Do better, Kennywood. It is literally 2025.

Oh and the “pints” option for Korea wasn’t even a Korean beer, but ok.

My favorites were the churros from Spain and whatever the raspberry pancake things were from Poland.

It started raining pretty hard around 3PM and Chooch was like, “Oh darn, I guess we will have to leave now.” He was in a big hurry to be done with family time!

Before we left, Chooch and I rode the Racer in the rain which was kind of fun actually, but there was a Jonny Craig-looking dad in front of us (in a wife-beater, no less) whose young son was sitting in front of him and he proceeded to SLAP THE KIND ON THE BACK OF THE NECK for the entirety of the ride?! Granted, he was doing it as a loving rough-housing type of thing but it was making Chooch and me so uncomfortable, like bro – ok, you could have stopped after the third whack, you know?

Just so fucking weird.

What else do I want to remember? Oh, Johnny Rockets is now the Carousel Cafe and they have a veggie burger! We were HOT several seasons ago when Johnny Rockets removed the black bean burger from their menu like fucking haters. Anyway, only Chooch wanted to eat there so I went inside with him while Henry went to pee (the Kangaroo really jostled it out of him), but then I realized I didn’t have my credit card so we standing there by the register like losers waiting for Henry to come back and then a big family came in and I was like UGH NOW THEY WILL GET IN FRONT OF US AND THIS WILL TAKE LONGER but luckily, they hung back to look at the menu and then I saw Henry finally walking over so I pushed Chooch over to the register to order. I was frantically waving Henry over but a mom and her daughter thought I was calling them over so they cut in front of the large family and joined us?!!? It was so awkward!!!

And then the young emotionless girl who rudely took Chooch’s order was so confused because there were three of us but only he was ordering and it turned into a whole thing much like everything does when the 3 of us are united, like we’re aliens from a planet of socially awkward dysfunctional families. She acted MAD that only Chooch was ordering food though and I was like, “MIND YO’ BUSINESS, MISSY.”

Anyway, not the most exciting trip to Kennywood but it was still fun, we rode Phantom, I sipped some beers, and it got us out of the house AS A REUNITED FAMILY and that’s all that really matters! Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be many more amusement park recaps this summer and hopefully at least one of them will be more exciting than this one.

My mom brought a bagful of photos over to Corey’s in Christmas Eve. I already had copies of most of them because I took all of the photos from my grandparents’ house when we were cleaning it out and they most have had doubles printed of everything to share between houses. I come from a very photo-happy family.

As such, I was letting Corey and Ryan take whatever they wanted but when I came across this shot of Ryan and me with our grandma on the BELOVED DARKRIDE La Cachot, I snatched it up with a quickness. I have never seen this picture before! And for some reason, we don’t have many pictures from our visits to Kennywood which is wild to me.

This ride definitely shaped my love for dark rides; it was a personal favorite of mine as a child and I still get so stoked when we go to an amusement park that has an authentic, vintage dark ride and not these new-fangled shooting rides which I hate. I want something with black lights, hokey K-Mart-esque Halloween masks, Pretzel cars, and the stench of damp basements and moth balls.

I don’t know if this was a Yinzer thing but my friend Keri always called it Lickashit.

They tore down the building in 1998 – for years I thought it was because that it had caught fire but evidently, the plan was always to tear it down because the building was so old and it was deteriorating, I guess (per the below video) and in the process of tearing it down, there was also a fire. IMO, removing this was the beginning of a slew of bad and questionable decisions made by Kennywood. I guess it doesn’t matter who owns the park, dumb moves are still bound to be made. This is making me feel extremely bitter.

(Apparently, you have to watch this video on YouTube.)

But yeah, that’s all I’ve got for this snowy, bitchy Sunday. Back to hypnosis via Enhypen videos.

This will primarily just be a photo-dump because we are in the throes of college move-in day prep and I can’t focus, as evidenced by the myriad screenshots that Henry sent me of yesterday’s post with typos circled by him.

Thoughts on this:

• Total sadness that Henry is the one catching my typos. Henry. Let this sink in.
• Some of my typos weren’t even misspellings but actual bizarre syntax clusterfucks that I truly have no idea what part of my brain I was visiting to bring back these crazy-ass ESL souvenirs.
• Love that the emails that are sent out when I post include the entire post so that all of my mistakes can live on in perpetuity even if I fix them on the website. Not that many / any people read it but still, that makes me uncomfy. I think Henry fixed the settings finally after I have been lamenting this for the last 10 years.

Moving on.

I was pleasantly surprised at how expansive this section of the park was. A cute little walking trail that took you from one fairy tale house to the next.

This was me after a solid one minute of struggling to get on this stupid chair.

GOALS.

Some of the houses had characters waiting outside to give you HANDSTAMPS. We of course weren’t aware of this at the beginning and missed a few and I guess no one bothered to clue us in since we aren’t CHILDREN.

That, my friends, is discrimination.

This was the moment that Chooch realized that “crown” means “head” in this context.

“So…Jack literally broke…his HEAD?”

Nursery rhymes are so dark.

Chooch barely fit inside any of the houses.

I felt obligated to take this picture as Snow White told us the names of all her dwarves.

Lol.

Here’s the aforementioned Snow White after she LEFT HER POST and incoming children were screaming for her, lol.

Definitely not the best Humpty Dumpty.

“Where are all these kids getting suckers?” I asked for the 48th time, fixated on the promise of free candy.

(REMEMBER WHEN THAT WAS BROOKS ORPIK’S NICKNAME WHEN HE WAS A PGH PENGUIN???)

“I don’t know,” Chooch mumbled, never taking his eyes off his phone because he’s back in that Geocaching life. “Over by the pirate ship I think.

So then this happened:

View this post on Instagram

Literally, Henry had to yell at him to do it because he was sick of me crying over the fact that I never got a Dum Dum and he just wanted, at that point, me to have a Dum Dum in my mouth to quiet me.

YAY.

This was the grand finale, I guess. Some castle thing.

Chooch was in line to pull the sword out of the stone, but parents kept encouraging their brats to cut in front of him which was insulting. This was the only time all day where I was getting angry at the people around me.

ME TOO! (If you look closely, you can see the Dum Dum jutting out of my mouth haha.)

Well, that’s it for Idlewild. Maybe one day I will have a grandkid to take here, but otherwise, I can’t imagine we will ever go back. (UNLESS THEY GET AN RMC FAMILY COASTER???)

Would you believe that I was born and raised in Pittsburgh but have never been to Idlewild Park until my FORTY-FIFTH YEAR OF LIFE?! I have no idea why my family never went here when my sibs and I were growing up – it’s only an hour away and it’s the sister park to Kennywood and apparently, at least this year, it has the distinction of being the “best children’s park in the US.” LET ME BE THE JUDGE OF THAT, THANKS.

A really fun fact that I would be remiss to mention is that I actually could have gone here in my early twenties, pre-Chooch, when Henry’s mom organized an Idlewild outing for the WHOLE FAMILY (Henry and his kids, and his sister and her family) but I was still the outlier, the homewrecker, etc. at that time so I was not invited and instead stayed home by myself, crying, getting drunk off of Manischevitz (classy), and taking depressing goth-centric photos of myself on my digital point-and-shoot cam because this was 2002 after all. I don’t think MySpace was around yet, but LiveJournal certainly was and I would bet everything in my Cure collection that I posted those pics on there in modern “lady on a fainting couch” fashion.

Anyway, this is where we chose to go on Labor Day because Henry put his foot down when I begged to go away for the weekend.

After Henry blew a gasket in the parking lot because as usual he chose the wrong lane to get into and the person in front of required an exorbitant level of assistance, like, was the parking booth attendant guy spoon-feeding him porridge too?! And then when it was finally our turn, the attendant held his hand out of the booth to stop us because some DILDO DAD drove through the parking entrance, PARKED, and then WALKED OVER TO THE BOOTH TO PAY. Bro, that is not how this works! So yeah, Henry was spitting speckles of hatred all over the windshield and instead of being on his side, this just made me angry because I am generally disgusted when Henry gets mad and starts complaining loudly about stupid things. So, that’s how our nice family day at a little kid amusement park started, lol.

First up (after Henry had to pee of course and I admired cutie squirrels) was Rollo Coaster which was nice and docile, a really great intro to the coaster world for young kids.  The ride op was like “I WANT TO GO TO THAT PARK -THEIR WILD MOUSE IS TALLER THAN OURS” as he was checking my seat belt and I had no idea what he was going on about until I remembered that I was wearing my Shivering Timbers shirt from Michigan’s Adventure.

(P.S. The aforementioned Wild Mouse was CLOSED FOR THE SEASON for refurb so this was the only credit available for Chooch on this visit UGH.)

Then it was #carouselfie time! Chooch was chagrinned because it was his turn to take it and this is one of his least favorite things in life but JUST WAIT UNTIL HE’S LIVING AWAY FROM MOMMY AND DADDY and then I bet he will start to appreciate these little, dorky traditions. RIGHT??

This was a huge step up from that dumpy carousel at Camden, that’s for sure.

This is definitely the one that will be framed and hung on the #carouselfie wall!

After this, we walked across a bridge to the little-little kid area.

We rode the train! There was DRAMA. When the train made it to one of the stations and stopped in order to let people off and new people get on, this man pictured below in the gray WV shirt tried to walk past the caboose. “Whoa, you can’t go back there!” the train attendant, also pictured below, said.

“I dropped my hat back there, I’m just going to go and grab it,” he said it, attempting to shoulder past the old man.

“That’s restricted area! I can’t let you go back there!” the old Idlewild guy reiterated, which made the WV Dad belligerent.

“I just need to grab a hat! YOU CAN SEE IT FROM HERE!” he shouted, jabbing an aggravated finger toward a plot of grass next to the train tracks.

This went on for quite some time while the train guy was trying to get everyone off and on the train. He kept saying he would get it for him, but to please be patient. Now WV Dad’s wife was turning around in her seat toward the middle of the train (what was the rush – they were staying on the train anyway!!) to see what was going on and WV Dad literally (LITERALLY!!) said loudly, “Sorry, I’m not ‘allowed’ to get the hat. I’m getting yelled at.”

To which the train guy snapped back in an exhausted, resigned tone, “I’m not yelling at you, I’m just saying that I can’t let you go back there. We have a procedure that needs to be followed.”

It was actually the epitome of second-hand embarrassment. The way this guy was acting SO PUT OUT over being told he had to FOLLOW THE RULES. Jesus Christ.

Ofc I have a video:

He “lost” his seat because people coming on the train took it and that was another crisis. The way he snatches the hat from the old guy at the end just really boiled my blood though. Get over yourself. THIS DIDN’T EVEN TAKE ANY TIME OUT OF THEIR DAY SINCE THEY WERE STAYING ON THE TRAIN ANYWAY!?!?!? Like, bro – we were all just sitting there waiting for the new passengers to board, this took zero seconds out of your time at the park. I hate people like this. Just follow the rules, please.

Otherwise, it was a very serene little train ride, with the old train guy behind us yelling things like, “GENTLEMAN IN THE GREEN PLEASE KEEP YOUR ARMS INSIDE THE CAR” and the gentleman in question was like, 7. And we saw some cutie squirrels chasing each other. I quite enjoyed my time on the train, hostile dad and all.

BUT I BET YOU THOUGHT THE TRAIN TANTRUM REFERENCED IN THE TITLE OF THIS POST RELATED TO ME!!

I will say that Idlewild is very magical for the eyeballs. I loved the feeling of being nestled in a forest. It was very rustic and a stark contrast to the concrete jungles that some amusement parks tend to be. This place really did feel fairy tale-ish BUT overall, I enjoyed the ambiance of Story Land in NH a bit more. First of all, it had better rides.

Chipmunks! There was even a chipmunk in the bathroom with me. I wish we had chipmunks in our yard!!

Departing super young kiddie land, back into regular kiddie land aka the main part of the park. Truly, this was a children’s park and we were the only people there without young’ns in tow.

Fuck the Idlewild Emporium though! They don’t sell magnets!

Why did I agree to go on this. These rides always make me sick!!

Chooch wasn’t amused that I took this shot. (And yes, if you were wondering, I did get wrecked on this ride. Henry was watching with the other parents and said that there were only two cars on  the whole ride that were spinning and ours was one of them. Natch.)

Then we decided to see what all the fuss about re: Confusion Hill, which our beloved DAFE (Darkride & Funhouse Enthusiasts) ranked in the top 5 of the country’s best dark attractions??? Or maybe it’s specifically dark walk-thrus?? I immediately had to send a picture of the sign out front to Christina, no context, and of course they knew immediately why I sent it and were t-r-i-g-g-e-r-e-d.

“Thangs.”

They hate the word “thangs.” LOL.

Yeah, this was fine, I guess. The two Confusion Hill actors / guides were highly energized and entertaining so I will give it that much, but this is just your standard gravity hill type roadside attraction where OMG WHY IS THE WATER UPHILL?? etc. The guy actor tried really hard to get Chooch to sit on a crooked chair mounted to the wall after all the other kids left and I know he wanted to say yes but was trying to act like he was too cool for that silly gravity optical illusion sissy shit.

I required ice cream after this. Then the dad in front of me ordered a peanut butter milkshake and I was like OR DO I WANT THAT INSTEAD but it put my brain into overload (I’m fragile these days, leave me alone) so when it was my turn to order, I just got a twist cone. :(

And then had regertz. :(

Chooch is too old for babytime ice cream cones!!! He opted for A PIECE OF GUM instead. This is the COLLEGE WAY.

Henry ruined this picture.

Then we sat on a wall and ate our ice cream while Chooch complained about being bored because he didn’t have ice cream to keep him busy. I appreciated the colors of the sprinkles here at Idlewild. Sometimes sprinkles just aren’t pretty enough! But these were nice and bold and the perfect complement to a beautiful end-of-summer day. Man, I know this was one of the worst summers I’ve ever had, personally, but it still makes me sad to see it come to an end and I find myself doing that frantic scrambling that I’m always wont to do come September.

It’s just weird not taking that “first day of school” picture of Chooch on the front porch, but I guess I can take one before we leave here on Friday to drop him off in Philly.

(FML. This is really starting to hit me hard, lol.)

Then we went on the lamest log flume ever. I’m sorry, but Idlewild’s not got SHIT on Story Land in the ride department. The only thing that they do better (spoiler alert) is their Storybook Forest, which we will get to in the next post.

Oh well, tata for now.

I scheduled last Wednesday off a work last week in an effort to siphon as much remaining quality time with Chooch-Soon-To-Be-At-College as possible. I had a bigtime bee in my bonnet about going to Cedar Point and he was a big walking UGH about this because “it’s so far away” (<  3 hours, get over it) but he eventually acquiesced because deep down, he loves mommy.

We only spent a half day there and it was A REALLY GOOD DAY (read: NOT CROWDED) but it was also pretty uneventful. So, this should be a quick recap.

Chooch and I split driving responsibilities on the way there. I had the first shift and he watched a movie on his laptop (Silence of the Lambs, which I can’t believe he had never seen before, I failed him as a horror parent) and I listened to Seventeen with full, unabashed abandon. It was a really nice and peaceful drive, honestly. (Except for when we switched driving responsibilities and I was able to look at my phone and see that Taeil had been removed from NCT because of a FUCKING SEX CRIME he’s currently being investigated for so that was fucked.)

When we arrived, the lot was barely crowded but HOO BOY for only allegedly being 82 degrees that day, it felt like 100. The sweat practically began dripping down my back almost immediately while walking through the lot. The one thing about Cedar Point is that there is really not much shade to be had.

We had a nice start to the day on Millie, maybe even one of the best rides I’ve had on that, but then we got stuck on the brake run while the ride attendants cleaned up puke from the exit platform and the empty train that was now chilling in the station. I wonder, in hindsight, if it was the broad who I saw while waiting in the station who was drinking a beer. I mean, it was nearly noon at that point so I guess no judgment but SHIT, it was so hot and I can’t imagine drinking a beer and immediately getting on a giga coaster, or any ride, on ANY type of day really. I rarely drink at amusement parks in general, honestly, but you do you I guess.

After this, we speed-walked to Maverick, which had a 45 minute posted – this would actually be pretty short on a regular day at CP but I was kind of hoping for something shorter on this random Wednesday during the last full operating week of the season, but whatever.

Well, it actually ended up being only 20 minutes!! That line flew, we never stopped moving, and 100% it was because of the lack of the Fastlane holders. That (and the fact that Maverick is notorious for breaking down frequently) is a huge part of the reason why this line is always so fucking long on a regular day. I was giving Henry updates the whole time, like, “We’re almost to the steps and it’s been less than 20 minutes!” and I hope he was sad that he didn’t have the balls to call off work. Little bitch.

Anyway, I am going to be a hater and just put this out there – I don’t really care much for Maverick. Maybe it’s because there is so much frustration that comes with it on every trip we take out there (most times we don’t even get to ride it because I don’t have the stamina to wait that long) but it honestly just hurts my head.

After this, we tried to ride SteVe but the Entrance Warden busted me trying to sneak in my fanny pack wrapped and folder under my arm and said I had to put it in a paid locker, which pissed me off because it fits in the free lockers inside the ride line and usually Henry will stick it in his cargo shorts pocket. I refused to pay for a locker, so we passed on SteVe and then I sent Henry a torrent of texts blaming this blight on him. “Tell Chooch to put it in his pocket!” he texted back, but Chooch was wearing these, I don’t know what they were, cotton leisure shorts with shallow pockets.

We decided to move on and try it again later, so we went on Gemini and sat behind Gemini’s Biggest Fan who was doing all kinds of creepy Jesus posturing and poses throughout the whole ride and I sort of felt proselytized by proxy into his branch of coaster crazies. The name he gave me was Jojo Roll, in case you need to put together a search and rescue mission one day.

After this, I was like, “CHOOCH, CAN WE PLEASE EAT LUNCH BEFORE I DIE” and he was like, ‘I’M NOT HUNGRY BUT FINE.” I was running on the fumes of a breakfast protein drink and needed solids, bigly.

But then on our way to food, we saw that the line for Wild Mouse was nearly a station wait?! IT HAS NEVER BEEN LIKE THIS FOR US! We always wait at least 45 minutes for this bitch! So, lunch had to wait.

This Wild Mouse is actually so much fun. My only gripe is that it really feels shorter than most coasters of this type!? And that even though by the time it was our turn, there were only around 8 other people in line but they still sat us with 2 other people.

I kept checking the weather app on my phone because it felt so much hotter than 81/82 degrees, honest to god.

But we got a reprieve inside the….fuck, I always forget the name of that big pavilion that replaced our beloved Spaghetti Noodle (née Wicked Twister). It’s annoying to me that instead of putting a good quality vegan/vegetarian protein option on the menu, CP bitches out by having a “Sides” meal where you can pick three sides instead of a protein FOR THE SAME PRICE THOUGH. I mean, that doesn’t seem like a great deal to me but it’s either this or go get pizza from some other place for the same price.

However, I will say that the sides are actually pretty good. That cucumber salad was DELICIOUS.

Chooch got strawberries instead of the cucumbers.

I was extremely full after eating all of this so I guess it is a pretty good deal after all.

Afterward, we immediately rode the Wild Mouse again lol. And then the atomic scrambler for our first time!?

I can’t stress how much I love the boardwalk area. They place the BEST music here. The scrambler was playing stuff that I have on my UltraLounge CDs!!

The ride op was kind of weird though. Chooch and I had to wait for the current cycle to finish – there was only one car occupied with three little girls, and after the ride ended, the ride op started yelling instructions to them on how to unlock the seat. The girl sitting next to the actual lock thing was the youngest out of all of them – maybe 6?! And she could NOT figure out what he was telling her, so then her dad was also yelling directions at her and she was getting frustrated, and then the girl furthest away had to try to lean across the other two to unlock it and the whole time, Chooch and I were saying out loud, “Why doesn’t the guy just walk over there AND DO IT FOR THEM???”

Anyway, she was crying by the time they got off the ride and even though it is in my nature to always take the side opposite a child in distress, I was actually on her team this time. That was kind of fucked up. And then I was so nervous about this lock situation that I made Chooch sit on that side so that he could deal with it.

AND WHEN THE RIDE ENDED, HE HAD ALREADY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE SIDE LOCK AND I WAS LIKE, “CHOOCH, DON’T MAKE HIM YELL AT US!”

To be clear, the ride op wasn’t actually yelling out of meanness or anger – he was just yelling to be heard and was a pretty chill young guy but also apparently lazy if he couldn’t just walk around and unleash riders himself?!

End of season apathy I guess.

Magnum time!!! I think the first row of the last car is my absolute favorite.

Just me trying to make memories, etc!

Then we had SteVe redemption!! Chooch stuffed my fanny pack in his pocket and we managed to slide right past the guy manning the entrance – the militant woman wasn’t there this time and the guy wasn’t even looking at us so it was super easy. IT WAS THE SHORTEST LINE I HAVE EVER BEEN IN FOR STEVE!! We breezed past the Fastlane attendant and made it all the way to ALMOST where the line splits for lockers / non-lockers. IYKYK.

And as expected, my fanny pack fit in the locker with no issue, rolled up into a little ball. I was reading about this controversy afterward on Reddit and most people seem to subscribe to my theory that this is just another CP cash-grab, an excuse for making people pay for lockers even though free ones are available in the line when they know damn well that small waist bags fit in there. But then I also saw that the “real reason” provided by CP staff is that “straps of waist bags can slip down into the locker and jam it”?? My straps aren’t even hanging off the thing because I unclipped it and wrap the straps all the way around the bag. There is nothing dangling off.

Anyway, our first ride was in the backrow and it was amazing. Every time I ride SteVe, I’m like, “OK, forget what I said, this is still my #1.”

We cheated the system and left our stuff in the free lockers afterward and immediately ran back in line because it was still non-existent. HOWEVER. WE FUCKED UP. It is a known fact amongst SteVe experts that the line for locker users has historically been shorter than the line for people who don’t need the lockers. (The line splits into two at the “need a locker?” checkpoint – if you don’t need one, you keep going to the right. If you do need one, there is a different line on the left that you can get back into after you’re done in the locker area. This line was the old Fastlane line and it is SHORTER IN LENGTH than the other line so it makes sense that you’d be waiting less!!)

Since this time we didn’t have anything on us that required a locker, we were relegated to the right-side lane, but then I heard the people behind us – who had done the same thing as us by getting off the ride and running right back into line – ask the line attendant if they could get into the left line even though they didn’t a locker because it’s faster. The line guy just shrugged and said, “I don’t know if it’s faster, but sure go ahead.”

THEY GOT ON THE RIDE SO MUCH FASTER THAN US! I swear to god, that right line moves like molasses!! So even though it was still a shorter wait than we would usually have for SteVe, it was so frustrating to see people who were behind us in line going to get a locker, and then passing us by in the left line.

Then a new ride attendant was manning the station – a woman this time – and gave us the biggest, nastiest look of resigned disgust when we asked if we could wait for the front. She let us, but not without making us feel like the scum of the earth. Look, on a crowded day, we wouldn’t have asked BUT the queue for the front car is purposely built out to account for larger lines?! And there were only two couples waiting in that line, anyway, but go off, lady.

But yeah, back to back rides on SteVe in less than 45 minutes? Unheard of. I was so happy.

We rode Magnum again, this time all the way in the back and that was a mistake, lol. My thighs were immediately bruised. I do love that fucking ride though and the station theme music makes me feel like I could roller skate up a hill.

View this post on Instagram

Chooch wanted to leave after this but then I saw that Raptor had a zero minute wait and gave him pleading eyes, so he said, “OMG FINE” like I’m the kid in this sitch. I had to send this picture to Henry because HOLY SHIT THERE IS NO ONE IN THE SWITCHBACKS? We literally WALKED ON, you guys. Got up to the station and walked right onto the back row. Glorious.

After this, we had a beautiful ride on Gatekeeper after a station wait and I finally agreed that we could leave. Sigh. It was around 5, but I would have happily stayed until the park closed at 8 because I truly wasn’t ready to leave yet. But Chooch was like, “We did what we came to do and now it’s time to go home.” Wow OK dad.

View this post on Instagram

I thought it was fitting that Summer Breeze was playing in my favorite boardwalk area at the end of our day at Cedar Point. Sometimes I hate Cedar Point, but it was so magical on this day.

On our way home, we stopped at a nearby Biggby for some coffee and that was a weird experience watching a gaggle of young teen girls work chaotically on too many orders at once and we thought for sure ours were going to be fucked but they were both delicious and it made me sad that we don’t have any of these joints closer to home because I would go there weekly.

TO CONCLUDE: It was a really nice day spent with my kid who is leaving for college in less than a week at the time of this posting. I am so glad that I was able to take some time off work here and there to make these last minute summer memories with him. GOTTA GO CRY IN A DARK ROOM NOW, FEEL FREE TO CRY ALONG WITH ME, ARGENTINA.

Can you tell that I am desperado to pack in as much as possible before Chooch leaves for college? I really hate how the vibe of the summer shifted so harshly and how I spent so much of it being emotionally catatonic. I am trying, you guys.

Last weekend, we did a small day trip to Huntingdon, WV to collect the whopping 3 coaster creds at Camden Park. We had tossed around the idea of going here for the past several years but honestly, it is so out of the way and (sorry locals) not really worth the trip unless you’re on the way somewhere better. But in this case, we were looking for something that we could knock out in less than a day, and Camden Park finally fit the bill.

We knew that this park was going to be kind of a dump (SORRY AGAIN LOCALS) but I honestly didn’t care and was stoked to see the infamous clown signage in person finally. You know I love me some clown shit. This didn’t disappoint!

We were there on a hot ass Saturday in August. Probably every other amusement park in America was poppin’ off but Camden Park was…meandering.

My IMMEDIATE first impression was that it was like Conneaut Park in PA (RIP) but make it a bit livelier (and you know, open). There really wasn’t much to write home about aesthetically or anything, but we knew this going in. Somehow the vibes were actually worse than I expected though. Not to say we had a terrible time, but it felt strange being there. We are not what you would consider cosmopolitan or uppity people by any stretch of the imagination, and I am not trying to be stereotypin’ the peeps here, but let’s just say we definitely stood out as interloping city folk.

Henry must have been feeling at home though because he was nicer than I have EVER witnessed him being to staff and ride ops. It was NUTS. “YOU HAVE A NICE DAY!” he kept shouting at everyone and it was very disconcerting, like we had been sent to a different dimension and Henry was over-acting some weird version of himself without fear of consequence. I can’t explain it but it was on par with how jarring it was to hear him say, “YOU AS WELL” in response (OK I typed “respondence” at first, I need to be put on the Billy Madison track) to cashiers, etc. telling him to have a good day.

I was really excited to ride this and expected to leave with spine damage, but holy shit it was good! I mean, not worth going out of your way for unless you’re a thoosie or someone who keeps a spreadsheet of coaster credits, and it is janky AF to be honest. But there was an intense of pop of airtime after the first drop that was completely unexpected, and I felt like I was going to be catapulted out of my seat. It made me scream and laugh my face off. Those are elements of a good and memorable coaster experience, if you ask me.

The ride ops were exactly what you’d expect from a park of this ilk – basically the maintenance crew, honestly. Which isn’t a bad thing but holy shit, the grizzliness was in full effect here. Basically, throw down some carnival rides but make it permanent and keep the carnies on staff. They released the lap bars with no announcement (at least, none that I heard!) so the bar slammed down HARD on my wrists. I was being v. vocal about the pain I was in but Chooch accused me of exaggerating. I was not! That lap bar was heavy!

Don’t worry, I didn’t sue or anything. BUT 10-YEAR-OLD ERIN PROBABLY WOULD HAVE TRIED TO.

Camden Park also has a dark ride with a very original name. HAUNTED HOUSE. You don’t say.

Haunted House selfie. LOL my unruly gray hairs.

This guy was like if Jonny Craig had joined the carnival junket instead of pursuing music.

View this post on Instagram

Anyway, I liked it just fine but it also seemed very short? I feel like it was definitely shorter than, say, The Whacky Shack at Waldameer and maybe even the Devil’s Den from the aforementioned Conneaut.

I was so pissed that this FAFSA billboard was haunting us while we were trying to enjoy a leisurely jaunt on the rickety carousel. (Henry had some weird rapport going on with the elderly operator, btw. He was yukking it up with so many blue collareds on this day, you guys. Maybe Henry will move to Huntingdon when he retires. Or maybe he can just move there now and join the Camden maintenance crew?!

I just want to remember that we got along the whole time we were here – which, in all fairness, was only about 2 hours, lol. But if you knew my state of mind not even just over these last few months but really for almost the whole last year, you would know that getting through an afternoon together as a family without me flipping my already unhinged lid…well, it’s an accomplishment to remember.

Wow, two carouselfie versions to choose from for the wall. I made Henry move up to a different horse and take a new shot because I wanted my mint horse to be in it. God, I make such a simple, benign tradition into such a miserable process sometimes haha. (Chooch’s voice is echoing into the void: “you mean ‘always.'”)

This is that Hipstamatic filter that essentially puts age spots on skin. I need to stop using this on pictures of people lol. Anyway, this was in line for the Whip, which was also being operated by an effervescent elder.

EW WHY IS MY TOOTH CAUGHT ON MY LIP. Jesus Christ, maybe I’m the one who should retire to Huntingdon.

This amount of pictures of the Whip is uncalled for, really.

I loved this old man operator so much that I had to walk back around and get him in a picture. This place was something else.

Get a load of this sketchy-ass sky ride. That’s a no for me, Paula.

The Little Dipper was actually pretty fun for a baby coaster! The ride attendant didn’t even check our restraints LOL.

We were the first people in line and I was all set to get the last row but one of the kids behind us asked, “Are you going to take the backseat?” and I said, “Maybe, why? Do you want it?” AND WHAT THE HELL CAME OVER ME, I ACTUALLY GAVE THESE KIDS THE BACK SEAT. We took the front row so it wasn’t all that bad. I’m just really scared that I did something nice for a child.

I have looked like hell all year. My hair doesn’t even grow anymore. Anyway, this was on the Tilt a Whirl.

Conversely, I didn’t want the front row on this one but there was a group of tween girls behind us and I didn’t like how they were acting – I can picture them being bullies in the halls of some shitty West Virginia middle school and that didn’t sit well with me so when I heard them going on and on about wanting the front row, I abandoned my dreams of being a back row bitch and ran to claim the front row out from under their snobby little noses.

Then before we left, I bought some swag in the gift shop which actually offered way better merch than a park of this caliber had ANY right to. I got a shirt, a magnet, a coffee cup, and a shot glass with a clown inside of it. I also could have bought a Camden Park photo album to hold all of our precious photographical memories from the day but apathy took over and I put it back on the shelf.

And yeah, that concludes our day trip to Camden Park, where Henry turned into a local yokel and we made it out without tetanus or a fentanyl addiction. Bleak, sorry.

Full disclosure, I forgot to finish writing about this. Life is so fucking stupid anymore! Anyway, let’s just quickly looks at these leftover pics and I will maybe write some words where applicable. Like here for instance, where we ended up riding this rapids ride with a thoosie dad and his daughter who invited us to join them on their raft after we chatted in line about coasters. Chooch, wearing an actual coaster group shirt, offered nothing and I was left limping my way through the convo because even though I am always whining about having no one to talk to about coasters, as soon as I do have someone I clam up?? Anyway, Henry took an entire album’s worth of photos of us on this for some reason.

We didn’t eat lunch here, but did get a pretzel and it was just OK. But I will not judge the food at the park on that alone!

We were trying to push Henry toward Cinderella and Chooch yelled, “He’s your biggest fan!” YOU CAN RIDE A HORSE-DRAWN PUMPKIN CARRIAGE TO HER CASTLE, BTW. We sadly did not do this, Chooch refused after seeing the line and the low capacity of each carriage.

This place in a word: enchanting.

In two words? Add “charming.”

When I saw this castle on the website, I screamed, “I WANT TO TAKE HENRY’S PICTURE THERE!” and by “scream” I mean that I sent Megan a CAPSLOCK message on Teams. She was like, “Oh that’s a must!” and then when Henry tried to scratch this off the itinerary, I cried, “BUT MEGAN WANTED ME TO TAKE A PICTURE OF YOU BY THE CASTLE!!” and he was like, “OH FOR GOD’S SAKE.” Lol, thanks, Megan :)

If Henry hadn’t needed to stand in line for A PRETZEL we could have made it to the castle before people started to line up for Cinderella but whatever.

Some nice man took a picture for us – if we use this one on the wall, does it even count as a CAROUSELFIE though??

Also, Henry is wearing his wedding band but as you can see, my ring finger is bare. I took my ring off at the airbnb the day before and I don’t think I put it back on for 2 or more weeks after that LOL. I also took it off in Chicago too. Our fights are so much more meaningful now that I have an actual wedding band to take off in a fit!

I loved the nursery rhyme walk-thru area!

So did Chooch!

The attention to detail really tickled my soul.

Before we left, Chooch got his drivers license, LOL. Unlike Liseberg, where we both got our boating license FOR FREE, this cost $12! Worth it though.

Only other thing to note is that when we were in the candy shop waiting to buy a whoopie pie, we saw a cute little mole scurrying about! I don’t think I have ever seen a mole in real life before! That just added to the charm.

What a nice day and not a single fight. With that,  I think we can finally put this New England Birthday Trip to rest because honestly, I kind of don’t want to think about it anymore for a while.