Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Sillywood Adventure

They say “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” So what did I do, I took on a soaking gun that was hooked directly to the aquifer. This was the last ride of our day at Silverwood and the three wet warriors shivered all the way out to the van. Let’s start back at the beginning of the adventure when Linda’s sister and her family, Al Dee, Kenyon and Alayna joined us for two days of fun together.

The Sollinger family arrived on Wednesday night, Silverwood was our Thursday destination so we ate dinner, talked and turned in. The morning was a mixed up mess of sleepy eyes and getting organized for the day. We arrived at Silverwood and immediately split up. The family went to the kids rides and we walked to the Timber Terror rollercoaster. The line was about 25 minutes and the ride lasts a little over 3 minutes. As short as the ride was time wise, it felt much longer as I sat and laughed at Linda. Linda screamed, in a high pitch, the entire ride! We got finished and we both giggled for about ten minutes.

We walked directly to Tremors. On this ride Linda’s screams were very different. It was not as sustained, and it came out in a much lower register. This noticeable change made me laugh again. She said it was because she was trying to control it. I agreed that she did a good job of trying to not scream, but her success was a bit limited. Again we walked to the next ride giggling about how we handled the ride.

At about noon we boarded the Silverwood train and enjoyed the slow and easy tour of the grounds. At the mine area, they have actors that collect donations and perform a skit. It was fun, but ended with an explosion that scared Alayna and got me completely drenched with water. We exited the train and went to eat lunch.

After lunch we rode a couple of easy rides, the Log Flume, Thunder Canyon and finally the Cork Screw. We walked to a theater and watched a cheesy magic act called Mad Mike. Then we split up and Linda and I went over to the newest ride called After Shock. I rode it, but didn’t like it that much. I quess I'm getting to old for the rides that scare you by speed and height.

Linda waited for me and when we were finished we threaded through the crowds and found the rest of the family. We all agreed that it was about time to head home, so it was decided that we would have one final challenge. Linda, Kenyon and I fought it out in the Bumper Boats. Part of the fun of these boats is the squirt guns on the front of each vessel. Kenyon and I teamed up against Linda, but while in the heat of battle I noticed that Diane and Al Dee had manned some water guns at the side of the pool. These guns are turned on by dropping quarters into the slots. My theory was that if I attacked the folks on the bank they would eventually run out of quarters and I would be able to soak them. I got completely drenched! No one ran out of quarters!

As we walked out of the park, dripping and shivering, I discovered that one gun was permanently on full squirt, and that lady aimed it at me the entire time I attached. So I fought the unwinnable battle against ink by the barrel!

We arrived at home and got the pizza cooking in the oven. Al Dee needed to pick up a bicycle trainer for Kenyon from Shopko so he and I drove in to town.

Al Dee wanted to visit a Waymark that I had established called, "Leopold" and since the bike pickup only took a couple minutes we drove out around the lake. On the way we talked about Geocaching and Waymarking and Al Dee told me that he was slowing down on the search for these places. His words were "I don't really do caches anymore." and "I hardly ever do micros at all!" So we visited Leopold and Al Dee took pictures. It was a beautiful sunset so the area was as picture perfict as it comes. On the way out we just happened to walk past a micro cache that Al Dee said was there, so since we don't cache that much any more, we found it.

Back at home we ate pizza and I put the bike together. There were no peddles in the box so Al Dee had to drive into Cd'A and get a couple replacements. He took a while and old Uncle Dean could not wait up so I went to bed hoping everything was alright.

The next morning we found out the when Al Dee went into town, he picked up the peddles and then also found a cache in the parking lot of ShopKo. Of course he doesn't do that as much any more!

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