On the Road Again

Seems to be the theme for 2008. We left out Thursday night after work for Santa Claus, Indiana. Our destination for this trip was Holiday World. We had heard great reviews and just had to try it out. My brother's daughter, Mahaley, went along for the ride. Get it-along for the ride. OK never mind. We were literally at the last minute searching for a hotel. This is so not like me who has OCD when it comes to planning. I had tried all day at work to research hotels or as Cary would put it-find the cheapest (sometimes cheap is not always good, as we have learned from the past). Never-the-less my old, dilapidated(yeah I had to look the word up), tortoise moving computer at work took forever to search. So I gave up until I could get home to my state of the art laptop--NOT. It's not much better than my work computer. I succumbed to the pressure, tired and stressed, and paid 134.95 for a Baymont Inn (thanks to that Government discount). Is that not ridiculous? Oh well we had a place to sleep and shower for the next 2 days.

We arrived at 10:00 PM and settled in. Nothing exciting must have happened, because I don't even recall that night. We awoke the next morning and headed to the only place (really the first place) we saw to eat-Denny's. I should have known when we saw the bug zapper lights at several booths, this was not fine dining. Actually Cary at first thought they were space heaters...until we heard the first zzzzzAP. And let me just say for the record Indiana does not have the same laws that Tennessee have so people can still smoke in public. Truckers, smoke, and bug zappers early in the morning. Enough said.

After breakfast we headed for Holiday World. It was a Friday and not overly crowded. They have 3 wooden roller coasters and if you have never rode a wooden roller coaster it is rough. I am in serious need of a chiropractor right now. After each ride I couldn't help but to wonder if all the jerking was good for your brain. Never-the-less we kept on riding. The only rides I refuse to ride are the round and round, spinning type. I just can't take it. We stayed until park closing and then headed back to the hotel. The kids were dying to get in the pool and hot tub at the hotel. It truly amazes me that the kids are so enamoured by the pools at hotels when they have their very own at home-not hot tub, but pool. We went to bed sometime around 11:30.

We awoke the next day and decided we would not be eating at the Denny's next door. So we ate the "free" continental breakfast. It was not bad, especially for free. Then we were off for Splash-N-Safari. Saturday the crowd was a different story. There were lines of people trying to get into the park. At one point I am sure I heard someone say that Saturday was the biggest crowd they have had to date. It was HOT. But that was OK because we were going to be in the water park all day. It has been a while since I have been to a water park and wasn't really looking forward to it, but I think I enjoyed the water park more than Holiday World. Again the kids were more enamored with the Wave Pool, seriously kids you have a pool at home!! There were a couple of slides we didn't ride, because someone (I'm not mentioning any names-Cary) didn't want to wait that long in line. Around 5 o'clock we decided to spend the rest of the time in Holiday World letting the kids pick which rides they wanted to ride one more time. Of course they picked the rickety, rackety wooden roller coasters that jarred me to death. Again we stayed until park closing and then headed out.

We are really getting this travel thing down. We can pack and unpack in a matter of minutes. If I could just figure out how to get the clothes washed and put away quicker.

Mahaley, who is 14, will probably be a somewhat permanent fixture on our vacations. She can watch the kids and play with the kids, it will be like traveling with a nanny.