The Water Park is CLOSED???!!

Lenore and I are in WI Dells at a place called The Wilderness (thanks to Steph for the recommendation!), which is a giant resort that includes several water parks, the majority of which are, quite unfortunately, closed. This fact was not evident on the web site when we booked our stay! The upside, though, is it's not very crowded, and there are a couple of indoor parks that are still open. I've never been to the Dells, other than hiking/camping at Devil's Lake in Baraboo, and I must say, it is indeed the quintessential midwestern American vacation (if you're into that kind of thing), complete with hairy bellied men and lots of over excited, dripping children (who totally cut in line!). One of the 3 indoor parks closed Monday, so we barely got to try it -- had about 45 minutes. My first impression was, "OMG, I am so too old for this!" We went down this giant tube slide in a round rubber life raft, and it was completely pitch black -- as in, you can't even see your hand in front of your face -- flying through all these twists and turns and drops... We were screaming and holding hands the whole way down. I was all, "HOLY CRAP, I am not doing this again if I live!" But then we got the bottom and we were ready to do it again.

Oddly, almost all of the lifeguards here are Eastern Eurpean-ish. Romanian? Polish? I can't even tell. The language barrier is kind of insurmountable, especially when you're trying to ascertain if a particular slide is going to cause one to lose bladder control. Not that *that* never happens here (water in the the kiddie areas is very warm). I asked one lifeguard which of the two tunnels was scarier and he said, "Dis one terrifying, dis one horrifying, you try both, great fun!" Yeah, OK, Boris, whatever. The one slide we did NOT do is called the Black Hole. I guess in addition to being totally pitch black and really fast, there's a huge DROP that of course you don't see coming until you're dead of heart failure.

We have, however, been slowly conquering one called the Hurricane. You ride down with at least one other person on a clover leaf raft with spindly little handles that seem hardly sufficient to save you from drowning. There are holes that you sit in/on; I suppose that's in case you wet yourself on the way down. It involves a twisty, hilly and somewhat dark (totally dark at night) tunnel, then you drop off a ledge of sorts into a giant funnel (imagine a funnel on its side, only about 9 stories high) where you fly down the side and then waaaaaay up on the wall, then slide waaaaay back down and up the other wall...it's actually pretty cool, before slipping down through the narrow end of the funnel. It is a 10 on the scream scale. Especially at night!

Lenore had gotten a little queasy from all the slides, so I hooked up with a nice couple, then we dragged another guy we found whose wife didn't want to go. Lenore got a good shot of us flying out of the tunnel.

The tube and body slides here are also almost all designed to be pitch dark. I'm not sure what the attraction is to that -- I suppose if you've ever wondered what it might be like to be flushed down the toilet, this would be a good approximation. I took a flashlight with me, but then I lost it in the water turmoil of it all. Oops.

As an added bonus, you can also get a free enema upon exiting.

Today we took a boat tour of the upper dells, which was very pretty. The boat wasn't too full, so we got most of the lower deck to ourselves.

This is supposed to be Mother Nature's rendition of Black Hawk.

And a stack of pancakes.

Part of the tour included a walk along a wooden pathway through Witch's Gulch (I think that's what he said), which was neat until you got to the end where there was, you guessed it, concessions and a gift shop full of crap.





Rooftops from the concession stands...


Another stop on the 2-hour tour was a short hike to watch a dog jump from a cliff to Stand Rock (I know, huh?!). However, this was the site of the first stop-action photo taken by H.H. Bennett in 1888. The original photo (now in the Smithsonian) was of the guy's son.


Now they recreate the moment with a German Shepherd named Otto. Otto seems to enjoy it, so...whatever.




Here are a few pics of our digs -- it's so much cheaper when half the place is closed down! However, we've got a 2 bdrm condo w/a full kitchen fireplace, huge flat screen TV, and, as luck would have it, WiFi.





There's also a very large indoor wave pool here, which is kind of fun, and a water dome where you can sunbathe indoors. It's a good thing we're not staying too long, though, because our pattern seems to be: water park in the morning, huge lunch, long nap, more water play, dinner and bed.

One oddity: there's free shuttles all around the resort (because heaven forbid anyone should have to walk anywhere), yet you have to climb literally 19,000 stairs to get to the top of these slides. Where's the logic in that?

And the Winner Is...

Thanks to all who helped me choose some new glasses. I ordered them Saturday, but they're going to take about a month because they're being custom ground (the lenses) in Germany. Ach du lieber! This is a brand spankin' new type of bifocal that's supposed to be even better than the verilux type. This frame worked best with this prescription, and it was also the most comfy. I may get another pair as a backup though...perhaps something with rhinestones (but no hearts).

In other news, I dropped a 40 lb. salt block on my lovely and quite expensive porch floor. *&)($#@!

To add insult to injury, the flooring place wanted $110 to fix it (?!). I could NOT get behind that. So I thought I'd try to seal it up myself. How hard can it be? I found the sealer for more than half as much at Menards and also bought some Gorilla Glue. Turns out I should have been a plastic surgeon. I didn't even need the sealer. So I fixed it myself for $4.95.




Check out new faces on the face blog!

An Outdoor Adventure

Last weekend Lenore and I participated in a nation-wide initiative to get women outside and recreating. Dubbed BOW (becoming an outdoor woman), it involved a day of workshops on all sorts of topics, including nature photography, plant ID, skeet shooting, archery, fishing, kayaking, more fishing...plus breakfast, lunch and dinner. All for $70 bucks. Where do we sign?! Our event was at the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation, which is a spectacular privately-held property along the Fox River. We had a fantastic time! We opted to camp out overnight as well, because they were serving pancakes with homemade maple syrup in the morning. Sweet! Here are some photos from our adventure weekend. As Austin says, enjoy the pics. (Remember, you can click on each one to see it bigger.)

I opted to try skeet shooting while Lenore learned about nature photography. Here's a little guy having a bad hair day that Lenore spotted during her class.


So first up was a gun safety course, then we got to shoot. I actually hit a couple of 'em! Our instructor, Rosie, was awesome.


She wears a pink shooting vest with a patch on it that reads, "girls with guns have more fun." Do not ef with Rosie.



Here you can see her cheering cuz I hit a clay pigeon. All in all, it was a good day to be a clay pigeon, because not many were shattered! (Thanks to Connie for taking the photos for me.)




Though we were only shooting 20 gauge shotguns, I still felt the kick enough to be rocked back on my heels. My friend Connie said 12 gauge might have knocked me on my butt. She's a crack shot and hit almost all of her pigeons. And yes, when you're ready to shoot, you really do say, "PULL!" so the guy can launch the target. It's pretty cool. AND today's modern pigeons are biodegradable. When I was a kid, my dad's good friend worked here at the game farm, so his son and I used to have a blast during off hours swimming and rooting around in the grass and woods for the clay pigeons that got missed.

Here's Connie shooting -- you can see the pigeon in the photo. It met an untimely death shortly after this photo was taken.


Lenore and I took backpack survival together. Here's our guide showing us how to build (in miniature) a survival shelter, and here's Lenore's survival twine made of basswood bark. Which you can also eat. Yum.



I really enjoyed the fishing, mostly because their lakes are so stocked, you can't help but catch fish. I caught 6 bluegills in under an hour. And also fed many worms to the fish, who are adept at removing worms from hooks. Part of the workshop was also a fillet and cooking demo, so we got to sample some fresh fish cooked outside. I threw all but one of mine back, and I made sure they got to keep the worm for their trouble.


I did not attempt to remove the swallowed hook. Ick. It was bad enough getting pooped on by worms. But I think it was probably worse for the worms.


Here are some other shots from the day.





This is a bog we hiked to, and one of the residents of said bog.



3 of our fearless leaders. Cindi, standing behind, was a total hoot and camped out with us then made breakfast. She works for the fish and wildlife service and led most of the nature walks.


A wood duck house. I'm pretty sure they had help building it.


You have to watch where you walk on this trail.


More creative names for nature paths :)


A relative of the spider that stole Lenore's glasses in Library Springs. It's very easy to walk into these webs, and they all seem to be face height. Yeeks.


I should add that while I didn't sleep all that well, I really enjoyed listening to the owls hoot at each other all night. There was also a racoon fight and some other wildlife noises that, if you filtered out the nearby tollroad, provided an interesting soundtrack to the night.



Wine in a Starbucks cup -- now that's class.