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?