Bingle.org

One thing that Orlando isn’t lacking in is water parks. We’ve got Wet’n Wild, Aquatica, Blizzard Beach, and Typhoon Lagoon. All “world class” water parks. Yet we felt somehow compelled to spend our two days at the Wisconsin Dells at water parks. Although while originally planning out the trip I thought we might spend part of our visit at a go-kart park or maybe ride one of the famous Wisconsin Dells Ducks by the time we started nailing down our itinerary the plan had morphed into spending about a day and a half at what is billed to be America’s largest water park, Noah’s Ark. But our plans suddenly changed when we started calling around for a room as we approached the Dells as we found a pretty good deal at one hotel that included free admission to Los Rios at a nearby resort. We’d get to play at two parks!

Like Pigeon Forge, The Wisconsin Dells seemed like a copy of Orlando/Kissimee’s I-Drive and 192 areas, complete with attractions like Ripley’s Believe it or Not and tons of themed mini-golf courses and the countless t-shirt shops. It was the second time on the trip that made us wonder why we’d driven all that way…

After spending an entire day on Day 13 at Noah’s Ark trying pretty much every slide that was open, we spent another four hours or so that evening at the indoor Los Rios water park, completely wearing ourselves out! While much smaller than Noah’s Ark, Los Rios still offered plenty of fun. While it felt like we had to climb hundreds of stairs up to the top of the slides after each ride, the girls insist it was actually closer to 90 stairs total to the top.

Day 14 found us back at Noah’s Ark and Los Rios to ride some of the slides a few more times until our leaving to drive back down to St. Charles, IL to visit Don for the evening (Linda was in Hawaii).

You can’t visit the Chicago area without having at least one meal at Portillos so after a brief stop to pick up Don we headed straight to Portillos for some Italian Beef sandwiches. Then we spent the rest of the evening playing air hockey on Don and Linda’s arcade quality table. When things started winding down, the girls fell asleep petting Mauka and Makai. I’m not sure if the girls or the dogs enjoyed that more!

Day 12 started with Belinda feeding us a great breakfast and visiting with Belinda, Mike, Tiffany, and Adie (complete of course with pictures). While sweet, our visit was short as we had adventure (and lots more driving) scheduled for the day.

The adventure was a visit to the Gateway to the West at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, commonly referred to as The Arch.

We spent several hours there taking tons of what we considered “artistic” pictures. We also spent probably about an hour in the observation area at the top of the arch, partly to wait for the shadow of the arch to fall in a straight line along the legs of the arch for another “artistic” picture.

And then it was back to the van and back on the road. Destination: The Wisconsin Dells!

Day 11 of the trip we got up really early as we had quite a bit of driving to do as we would be heading first to Mammoth Cave for a 4.5 hour tour through the cave only offered once a day (which meant we had to be on time) and then to the suburbs of Saint Louis to visit Belinda and Mike.

The girls slept for a good part of the drive to Mammoth Cave. We happened to be driving over a pass in the mountains right near dawn and it was a very pretty view. At times we were above the low hanging fog down in the valleys and at other times deep within the fog. There was one particular place we wished we had stopped at for some pictures or video, but by the time we realized that would have been the best place to do so we were many miles past.

The other “eventful” part of the drive to Mammoth occurred when the four lane highway we were traveling straight west at the time suddenly ended. We cruised through a traffic light at speed, saw a sign that said “pavement ends 1000 feet” and promptly dropped several inches off the end of the nicely paved highway onto an older road. We were pretty confused as we could see the remains of the former highway straight ahead of us beyond a low fence. We stopped for directions and found out that our maps and KareKare were both out of date and didn’t show that the road had been rerouted a few years earlier. We were soon back on our way and arrived with plenty of time before our tour was to depart.

I’d been to Mammoth Cave with Dad when I was little and had memories of a long walk through the enormous (they called it “Mammoth” for a good reason!) cave. Karen and the girls and I had stopped at the cave on the way back to Florida during one of our drives up north when the girls were little but had only taken a brief “intro” tour. Today was to be different – 4 miles!

After gathering at the visitors’ center, we were taken by bus to one of the many entrances to the cave and began our journey. We saw a few bats at the entrance, but didn’t really see any more “wildlife” inside the cave until one of the several stops we made where one of our guides showed us a huge cave cricket that he’d plucked from the wall as we walked past. When he placed it back on the wall we spotted another one on the wall just a few feet away from where he had just placed the other. Now that we knew what to look for we spotted several more during the rest of our tour.

I had remembered eating in the “Snowball Cafeteria” during my visit to the cave when I was little and was looking forward to sharing it with the girls. While the snowball shaped formations on the ceiling were like I remembered, somehow this chamber (which serves as a rest stop along the tour) was much smaller than I remembered. As we had eaten shortly before the tour, we didn’t have anything there but did take plenty of pictures.

The hike through the cave was definitely tiring. Lots of elevation changes, some sloped and some stairs (some of which were very steep). A couple of the passages (usually on the stairs) were either very narrow or had some pretty low overhangs, so you definitely had to exercise plenty of caution.

A couple of the special tours offered at Mammoth Cave are the lantern tours. Well, as it turned out there was a lengthy section of the Grand Avenue section that was having some issue with the lights and our group of about 75 people were therefore “forced” (for no additional charge!) to use 10 or so lanterns to light our way for over a mile of the tour. I acted quickly and grabbed one of the lanterns for us. It was pretty neat (and surprisingly bright) to tour the cave that way!

The tour ends with “Frozen Niagara” which is a section of the cave filled with beautiful flow stone, stalagmites (growing up from the floor), stalactites (growing down from the ceiling), and columns.

Upon exiting the cave we took the buses back to the visitors’ center where we walked over some bio-security mats that are designed to help slow the spread of White-Nose Syndrome which is a fungal disease affecting bats, and then took a short walk (about a quarter mile each way) to see the “Historic Entrance” which is where we had visited when the kids were little.

The rest of the day was devoted to the same thing that had consumed the start of our day – driving. We made it to Belinda and Mike’s (really nice!) house around 9:00 p.m. and had a nice visit before heading to bed.