Thursday, June 6, 2013

The Dells!

On our trip to the Wisconsin Dells, Andy went down the orange, tubular waterslide at the resort.  Chris slid down first and was horrified to discover how pitch black it was inside the tube.  I believe he described it using the phrase "watery grave."  By the time he emerged, though, the events were already in motion.  Andy was in the slide, and he splashed out into the four foot pool a few seconds later, feet first and face down.  Although clearly shaken, Andy managed to hold back his tears as Chris gathered him up.  A few moments later, he was able to describe the slide as follows:

"It was very dark.  Daddy!  Daddy!  Daddy!  Then, deep in the water."

That was the only slide that gave Andy pause, though.  He went down the two tall, looping green slides (the ones that were not enclosed and black as night), the slightly smaller kiddie slides, and then got happily washed to shore by the wave pool.  He got joyfully knocked over with the force of three hundred gallons of cascading water and had the time of his life in the two smaller toddler pools.  Wearing his blue life vest, Andy decided he was invincible and basically walked into the larger pools as if he were suddenly going to morph into a Jesus walking on the water type figure.

Alex took a little longer to warm up to the water park, though.  After we first arrived, I would try to set Alex down in the shallowest of water and he would claw and clamber at my neck and arms and yell out what sounded like baby obscenities.  "Are you out of your mind, bitch?"  I swear I heard him scream.  Finally, he warmed up to the place, though, and seemed to enjoy the baby pools, which I cautiously sat in him with, since there's no way any level of chlorine could possibly keep up with all of the urine in there.

The trip started out like you might guess.  We got into our car, drove exactly one-point-seven miles and then had to pull over at the gas station so that Andy could pee.  The next stop was thirty minutes later after we crossed the state line.  And then we lasted another hour before we had to stop again.  The Dells are two hours and forty minutes away.  I have decided this is the longest amount of time we can be in the car with those two kids.  Anything else would be madness and would send my sanity down an orange, pitch black waterslide of doom.  Andy moaned a lot on the way to the Dells, asking if we were there yet and generally just wanting to get out of his car seat.  Chris snapped at him a couple times, barking, "Do you want to go home?"  And there it was, the snapshot of family vacation that I so remember.  Two cranky kids in the backseat, a strung out father driving the car, and the mother in the passenger seat wondering aloud if any of this was worth it.

But it was, of course.  And, oddly enough, we managed to make the whole drive home two days later without stopping even once.  I think the kids were in a post-vacation coma of sorts, the heavy turkey gravy and red wine-like trance that often comes after too much stimulation and a lack of Caillou.

We rode the Wisconsin Ducks, those amorphous vehicles that have wheels on land and then float in the water.  That may have not been the best call, considering the rickety nature of the vehicles, the lack of proper restraints, and the fact that the sides of the boats only come up to about mid-thigh.  Andy was fine and properly entranced with the ride and the view, but a squirmy Alex, who was not satisfied with being tightly hugged in my lap, tried his best to escape and seemed to be aiming right for the water.  I wanted to ask the Duck driver how many babies they'd lost in the history of the Ducks but was fearful for the answer.  I'm sure he would have said, "Well, no more than twelve.  Or so."

We also went to the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory, where Chris lamented that he never got to ride the Gyroscope as a kid.  It would seem ridiculous to do so now, just like the way I felt the one time I went down one of the waterslides by myself without Andy by my side to prove my validity as an adult human able to properly function in a society.  I am in my thirties, and I don't feel like I can go down a waterslide by myself, just for fun, without feeling and looking like kind of a weirdo.  Especially since, after I got to the bottom of the slide, the lifeguard approached me and said, "You know you're in the tube backwards, right?"  Yep, I figured that out halfway down, sir.  Now please stop looking at me, okay?

All in all, we had a great trip.  Andy had a blast, every person we encountered commented on Alex's smile (the kid just doesn't stop!), and we even slept well in our hotel room.  Except for Andy who fell right out of bed the first night and landed with a tremendous thud on the floor.  Chris just picked him up and put him right back in bed, and I was reminded of a story I'd hear about Chris' brother Mikey falling out of bed one night when they were kids.  Chris picked him up, put him back in his bunk bed, and they both fell back asleep.  The next morning, it was discovered the Mikey had broken his collarbone.  Lucky for us, Andy's collarbone seemed intact.  Phew.

Can't wait to go back.  I think we'll be ready to make the drive again in no less than two years.

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