A family trip to nowhere new, but one of the best trips we've had.

There are sometimes things that you don't expect to be absolutely outstandingly fun and memorable but then they turn out to be surprisingly fun and memorable.  A long-weekend trip to Niagara Falls, NY for some friends' wedding was just such a trip for us.

It was planned as taking Thurs, Fri off of work.  We were hitching up the camper and staying a couple nights near the falls (which is where the wedding was, too).  We then planned to move homeward and stop near Erie, PA and go to Waldameer Park as well as Presque Isle's peninsula fest.  Then home on Sunday.

We got into the campground in Niagara Falls, NY with some fanfare.  It was significantly off of the highway and the GPS decided to take us on the scenic route.  Nothing too bad though.  We were on what I would consider to be residential roads but there were still semi trucks!!! travelling the same roads.  Mostly, it was the construction that sucked.  The campground was nice enough.  GREAT location in proximity to the falls, but it was really setup for the big rigs and people who live inside their camper for the entire time at the campground.  For those of us that like to exist outside...it's not such a great value at roughly $45/night after 10% discount!  Although it was a full-hookup, I didn't connect to anything other than electricity because my water and sewer connections would have made it an uncomfortable stay for my neighbors.  I'm not sure why when in a park that is 50% empty that they put two of us right next to each other.  Anyway, great place to stay if you're going to be out touring the entire time.  Below, you can see the site we were on.  Yes, that is my neighbor's water, electric, and sewer hookups in the middle of my campsite.

The wedding doesn't have much significance to this blog, so I'll skip right to the touring we did while we were at the falls.  We decided to do the maid of the mist tour.  Very cool.  I advise getting there early.  You get right on and it's not crowded.  By the time our tour was over, there was a hefty line waiting for the boat.

Despite the fact that I've been humoring Andrea with wearing sandals in warm weather, she decided that we needed to walk to Canada.  I have nothing against walking.  Just not lots of walking in sandals which are flip-flops on steroids.  I was bleeding by the time we were done for the day, but at least I got some great poutine for lunch.

  

I didn't really have time for pictures, but we did a whirlwind tour of a couple local wineries back in NY.  In the end, an incredibly successful and fun day.  The falls, trip to Canada, Poutine for lunch, clean up for the wedding, then winery hopping, dinner, and back to the camper for some (inside) time relaxing.

The next morning was packing up and heading for Erie, PA.  We pulled into a slightly larger but perhaps more awkward campsite.  The campgrounds in the Erie area were packed full due to Presque Isle days.  We were put on one site of a set of "buddy sites".  Great if you're there with people you know.  Not so great if you don't.  We spent some awkward moments that afternoon chatting with our neighbors.  They pulled out mid-afternoon and the next occupant chose to park their camper "backward" to not face us since they had connections long enough to still hook up.  The other side of their site was a small yard and the campground road, so it's not like we were THAT bad of people :-)  We knew that Waldameer park was a destination for us, but Andrea put on her planning hat and looked up things good to do int he area with kids.  There was actually a family pack that you could buy to the local minor-league baseball team.  You got tickets, hats, and coupons for free meals at McDonalds.  So for me, this was going to be classic.  Andrea hates McD's.  I try to avoid the place, but only due to the calories and trditional fast-food; but I don't think it tastes bad at all.  So we bought the pack.  I expected the kids to give up after 4 innings, max.  Turns out, they stuck it out the WHOLE GAME!  A foul ball given to Mason by a generous fan in the row in front of us ight have helped, too.  Andrea's and my favorite beer was on tap as well, so it was a great trip.  We now have a greater appreciation for minor league ball teams and parks.  Not as much game action, but the prices are lower and seats are better.  They still do the same entertainment stuff.  I think we might be finding the Akron Rubber Ducks games a few times next year.

The last part of this blog post is a few pictures of our visit to Waldameer.  I last went here as a kid at least 28 years ago.  It's changed a bit, but I think for the better than I recall it.  It was, as I recall from so long ago, on the verge of closing up.  Maybe I was just there at off times of the year.  Although busy, we never waited more than 30 minutes for a ride, and I think that was only 1 such case.  Pretty much everything else was a near walk-on.  It was fun to see what I remembered and what I didn't.  Although Parker was eligible to ride the big coaster there, he didn't.  I rode it alone and I am pretty sure it would have scared him.  For me, it was awesome.  One of the best wooden coastrers I've been on.  I even convinced Andrea to ride it.  The boys loved the smaller, older wooden coaster there, though.

Although not picture worthy, it bears mention that on our trip home through northeastern Ohio, Andrea decided that a winery near Geauga on the Lake would be a great place to stop.  Sure...with Airstream in tow.  That turned into winery-hopping; 3 of them to be specific.  We were ahead of the crowds, though, so really it wasn't bad to get parked with the camper.  And we bought some great wine.  Why won't they ship this stuff elsewhere in Ohio where they ship all their sweet wine!  Grrr.

The Birthday Bash...round 5

It's become a staple of our lives.  We will attend this rally every year until the organizers decide not to do it anymore or move the location out of reach for us.  It's the Birthday Bash.  It was in its 5th year this year.  Since Bash 2, little has changed and that keeps us coming back year after year.  Why mess with perfection?  Total relaxation around a lake that we have all to ourselves.  Kids' activities, adult activities, food, drink.  It's so good that we even brought an SoB family with us this year and they've caught the bug.

This year, we even participated in the un-official pre-Bash at PennWood Airstream park.

Then, on to the Bash 5.  I'm not going to put a lot of description here.  I think the pics speak for themselves.

Friends of Dorothy Rally and Hot Springs, AR

There is a Airstream rally called the Friends of Dorothy Rally.  In the past couple of years, we have watched the discussion and pictures of the rallies and decided that it was something that we wanted to attend at some point.  The location, near Hot Springs, AR, isn't exactly a weekend trip for us, so we know it would be a long-term plan to get there.  It fit nicely with our central states road trip both location and timing, so we decided to make it a stop.

Bottom line...one of the best rallies I've been at.  I wish we would have taken more time to see Hot Springs, though.  We took one rainy afternoon and went into town.  The rest of the time was spent doing rally activities and enjoying the absolutely awesome campgrounds and pool.  I doubt that I would have shelled out the money to stay at this place on my own, but with the rally we got a pretty good discount.

The rally itself was incredible as well.  Lots of very social people, excellent food, excellent drinks.  The late night party on Saturday was one for the records, especially for Andrea.  Let's just say: what happens at the FoD rally stays at the FoD rally.  It will be a rally that we reminisce for a long time.

This is the lone picture that we have relating to the National Park in Hot Springs.  The park / area isn't so much a place to take pictures, especially with the storm moving through.  But it's a place to see the way people used to live and enjoy life.  They would take a vacation to this town with natural hot springs and spend time in saunas, walking through the gardens, socializing, shopping.

So then there was the rally

The site was nice.  Our neighbor captured a cool picture of the storms passing by north of the campground.

 The pavilion is ready for people and food

Throughout the time at the rally leading up to the grand finale which is always Saturday night, we kept hearing things about how "the sign wasn't there" and "she forgot the sign".  Turns out it was there and just talked-up so that when it was turned on it was a surprise.  The folks that owned this Airstream really did it well.  I took no pictures of the inside.  From the outside, it appears to just be a well kept 70's Sovereign.  But inside is very theme decorated and clearly ready for a party.  I hope to find this trailer at another rally soon.  Nothing like 30 adults at the very end of a row in a campground having to be told to keep it down...twice.

This has nothing to do with the rally, but Mason just happened to be really thrilled after breakfast for some reason and it was the morning of the rally before heading home.

We've now been to KS and OK and that's about all I can say about that

As I've mentioned a few posts ago, one of our goals is to visit all 48 states.  We knew that we had to find something in KS and OK to do.  In line with another goal, we sought out National Parks to visit.  We hit a few, but amazingly took pictures of none.  So here were the highlights of the 3 days we spent in "almost"-KS, KS, and OK.

Our first leg of this journey was to get on the west side of MO in order to stage ourselves for our trip across KS the next day.  So, what better place than Kansas City, MO.  There was to be some cool stuff downtown, so we spent the morning and an hour or so after lunchtime travelling across the state of MO to our campground outside of KS-City, MO.  After unhitching, we proceeded downtown to the old central station, which still is a functioning railway hub.  There was a nice overhead gateway to the shopping mall and LEGO land.  We didn't go into legoland because the one hour of remaining open time didn't justify the entry fee.  Nevertheless, our kids spent about 30 minutes in the LEGO store trying to find what to buy.  Mason wanted everything.  Parker, as usual, couldn't decide what one thing to buy.

So the highlight of this trip was where we had dinner.  Andrea consulted her trusty Yelp app and found a gourmet pizza place (http://www.yelp.com/biz/spin-neapolitan-pizza-kansas-city).  GPS got us there and we didn't want to leave.  Beautiful wine selection, wood fired pizza, kids' menu, ...  We ordered a salad and a pizza, kid's pizzas for the kids, a carafe of the house red, and proceeded to the patio.  There needs to be more places like this.  The kids even got a gelato with their meal.  We waxed European and sat on the patio for about 2 hours enjoying the weather, food, and wine.

So the next day was the KS tour.  We had a number of stops planned and had an itinerary to keep to make sure we could get to all places while they were open.  First up (no pictures...grrr) was Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site.  You can do the research yourself on the place.  Basically, I thought is was very well done.  The rangers were excellent.  We've been skipping the Jr. Ranger stuff lately due to mom & dad having to complete more of it than the kids, but the rangers suggested we try it and were awesome in motivating the kids and telling the history at a kid's level.  Might have helped that we were there on a weekday morning, too.

Moving on, we visited Tall Grasses National Preserve.  This place is "under construction" at best.  The visitors center was in a state of construction.  The grounds were in a state of construction.  Basically, if you wanted to hike in hot, windy weather; then this is the place for you!  Two kids, two adults in sandals, an itinerary to keep, and wide open grass land...not so much.  So we had a quick look around, lunch under a shade tree in the parking lot, and back on the road.

Next destination: underground salt mine museum.  Wouldn't have been my choice, but Andrea found good reviews for it.  It doesn't look like much from the surface, but in the end...was well worth it.  You get to go down into what is still a functioning salt mine.  About 600ft down, I think.  You get the full miner setup including an emergency respirator just in case something happens.  There's the museum down there, mining equipment and such.  A plug for the storage company that puts old movies, files, etc. in temp. controlled storage in the mines, a mining train ride, a golf-cart train ride.  Pretty neat, really.

After the salt museum, it was off to find our campsite for the night.  We were pretty much in the middle of nowhere so we found what was billed as an un-attended self-serve campground.  First, we had to battle the sand storm going on outside, though.  The was nasty.  I'm very comfortable towing pretty much any trailer, but the wind in KS made it a white-knuckle trip for the only about 15 miles to the campground.  The campground was everything we expected.  No frills whatsoever, but $15 in a drop box for full hookup.  Only 3 people there that night.  I really needed a drink from the drive, but there was an impending Tornado front on the west side of the state that we were watching on the news that kept me from my usual consumption in case we had to pull up anchor and move in a hurry in the middle of the night.  All of the forecasts for our area said there was nothing to worry about.  I guess the Ohio vs. KS mentality about tornadoes is a little different.  As it turned out, never a drop of rain at our site and in the morning we moved on toward OK City.

Our main purpose to go to OK City was to say we had been to OK.  We weren't really sure what to do, so we found a resort-style campground and opted to visit the local science museum.  I wanted to visit the OK City Bombing National Historic Site and Memorial, but I called ahead after viewing the area on Google Maps and inquired about parking a truck + camper.  I was pretty much told that I wouldn't be able to park.  The nice (and honest) person that I spoke with said that I could probably gets enough spots if I was lucky, drove around long enough, and was good at parking.  I've got the latter down pat, but the former two...not so much.  Also, it didn't seem as though there would be much to interest the kids there, which means mom and dad don't get to take in much, either.  So we hit the science museum.  Overpriced, as usual for these things.  This one was especially not good, though.  50% of the "exhibits" were broken or otherwise non-functional.  Those that did work were something that my parents would have used in a high school science lab.  The best part of this place was a newly built indoor multi-level "tree house" and a Segway driving track.  We made the most of these two and decided to split to the campground to use the pool.

Lastly for this wordy entry since I was lazy with the camera...the campground.  This was, by far, the highlight of the stop in OK City.  It truly is a resort.  A bit pricey as campgrounds go, but excellent value given the condition of the place and the amenities.  Although, I highly discourage use of the mini-golf.  It's nearly $30 for a family of 4 to play (in addition to the campground fee!) and the course sucks.  For $30 it better be awesome!  Some of the greens were not even kept up, had puddles, debris.  You could tell this was someone's "fun idea" that didn't pan out well.  It would be better off removed and the pool / splash area expanded.  Don't get me wrong...I'd surely stay here again if in the area, just wouldn't play mini golf.