We left Iowa 😔 on Saturday, June 23rd (2018) and got to Massachusetts on Wednesday the 27th. In the interim, we stopped and did some fun things along the way, things we hadn't taken the time to do on all of our drives between the two points in the years prior. This time, we had the time to do some of them!
We stayed at Kalahari waterpark in Sandusky, Ohio from Saturday to Tuesday morning. We'd been to Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells before but not to the one in Ohio. It had a fun zip-lining course that the boys did and a little zoo, neither of which the Wisconsin one had. It was a lot of fun (although I prefer the Wisconsin Dells Kalahari overall--I liked the layout of the indoor waterpark and the resort better there).
There's the figure of John in the distance, zip-lining.
And there's my babydoll Sam, zip-lining for the first time ever! He loved it!
A backward glance...
This was part of the view from the balcony of our room. We spent most of our time at the indoor waterpark rather than the outdoor one (it's a lot bigger inside, and shaded!).
Also from our room's balcony I had a good view of the boys on this part of the zipline. In this picture Sam is up on the platform and John is headed through the air towards him.
There goes Sam...
...and there goes John!
They make it looks so easy. I would have been scared. But someday I think I'll be courageous and do this in a rainforest or over a Caribbean beach or something.
On Monday we went to nearby Cedar Point, a popular amusement park that's known as "America's Roller Coaster Capital." That is why we went, and it was solely for the boys! They'd been watching lots of YouTube videos in the previous months about the coasters there and they couldn't wait to go on them. Cedar Point didn't disappoint and they rode every roller coaster they could (John went on all of them, Sam went on most--he wasn't tall enough for some. Peter and I went on a few.)
View of some of the park from the parking lot. Look at all those coasters!
This is the Top Thrill Dragster. It's VERY high, very fast, and very steep. I will NEVER go on this ride. The boys rode it twice and loved it. Their only complaint was that it wasn't a longer ride. I don't know why they would have wanted to be on that horror show for any longer than they were. I don't know where their thrill-seeking comes from. It skipped a generation with me and Peter!
The park's newest crown jewel is Steel Vengeance, an amazing roller coaster that's so popular that sometimes it has up to a 4-hour wait. Luckily the boys only had to wait about an hour to ride it--and that was with FastPass! In retrospect, I wish I'd gone on it too. I let my fear stop me, but I think it would have been more fun and thrilling than terrifying. If we go back I'll go on it. And we will likely go back at some point--Sam made me promise, and I can't break a promise to Sam.
The boys loved Steel Vengeance; it was their favorite coaster in the whole park!
Some other coasters the boys went on...
John's face cracks me up in this one. 😆
They're in the front row towards the left in both pictures (I don't know why there are two of the same picture).
While John was going on some of the coasters that Sam couldn't, I took Sam to play some games, and he won this big sequined snake. It wasn't easy to do either, but he did it on his last try. He was so happy!
My favorite ride in the park was Maverick, a really fun coaster that doesn't go too far up from the ground (those ones are my favorites!) but has some really fun and suprising twists and turns and things. It's one of Cedar Point's most popular rides and I can see why.
(None of these is Maverick, I just thought this was very picturesque.)
It was a fun day at Cedar Point! And then it was nice to go back to Kalahari that evening and cool off on the slides and soak in the hot tub. I'm going to give the third thing we stopped to do its own post because the pictures are pretty and plentiful enough to merit their own post. Stay tuned!
