The Wisconsin Dells

Travel brings power and love back into your life.

I love to travel. If I had loads of money I'd travel the world, and experience so many beautiful moments I'd never be lonely when I get older. I believe that traveling is good for the soul. Those experiences you get when you are traveling are priceless! Like getting an education, it's something that no one can take away from you.

We decided that this year on our vacation we'd do it differently. In years past we'd get up at 

O'dark 30 to drive the 12 hours north to Cold Comfort Farm. Every year as we pass Madison, WI where Mitch would always comment that we should stop at The Dells to swim, and relax before crawling back into the car to drive another six hours north. I won't lie, I was reluctant. I don't like crowds, or crowded places. I just wanted to get up to the farm so that we could relax, and stopping at The Dells wasn't my idea of a good time. As I get older, and I watch my children grow, I've come to this very hard conclusion...they aren't getting any younger. With that said, my moments with them as children are getting less and less every year, plus I'm always telling them that it's not always about THEM, so I needed to take my own words into consideration, and realize it's not always about what I want either.

Loved the T-Rex!

Mitch was right, by the way, and I tell him this all the time, this WAS a good idea! I mean COME ON.

 A T-Rex?! This was a good omen to start off our trip. I'm a girl that believes in signs. THIS was my sign to relax because this was going to be GOOD! 

We made reservations with a hotel that gave us four passes to Noah's Ark Water Park plus our one night stay at their hotel for a little over $200 total. Now if you have ever been to The Dells tickets per person are in and around $40 a piece. So right there just for the four of us it would have been around $100, Claire being two she would have gotten in for free. So our hotel, if we paid full price for our tickets, was about $100 a night. That's not a bad deal for this family of five. When we decided to have a third child, I asked parents of thirds, what changes should we expect between having a second, and a third. I heard two things, you wait in line longer at restaurants, and you pay more for group activities. This has proven to be very true.

We arrived safely, checked in, and suited up! Mitch, Roo, and Soph wanted to go ride all the fun rides, so that left Little Ms. C and I chilling at the baby pool. I didn't mind too much. I must say that the people watching was FANTASTIC! The best part about this place was that NO ONE CARED what they looked like. Most of the employees were European, most of the water park goers were European too. It was a Mecca of "who gives a rats ass if you have cellulite, lets swim!"

I was digging on this place. Out of the thousands of people there I noticed ONE, yes ONE, woman who seriously cared about her body image. She didn't need to given the population that day, but Lord knows she cared. Poor Sugar, but to each their own…

Little C fitting right in at the bar.

So while Little Ms. C and I were having a grand 'ol time at the kiddy pool she spies the BAR! She's totally my kid, I can't disown her if I tried. Not that I'd want to she's so blasted cute! (She knows it too)

Sidles right up and orders herself a drink.

Poor little Sugar was too short to crawl up the bar stool, so mommy helped, but once she was up there, she was jabbering on in toddler talk to the bartender. I love this place…it seriously serves alcohol! Best water park EVER! If you are ever in The Dells you need to go to Noah's Ark!

www.noahsarkwaterpark.com

Gives Zero Fk's that she's totally underage.

What can I say she is her mother's daughter. The bartender thought she was so cute that she got her little drink for free. (Yes, it was non-alcoholic) She's two, and she's totally scoring free drinks at the bar! O.o

Mitch, and the girls finally came back for us after leaving us at the kiddy pool for almost an hour. I can tell you how much I wanted to drink after that… NOT EVEN JOKING. So we decided to walk around, see the sights, and ride some rides. This is how the conversation went:

Mitch: Lets go on some rides, I found some that Claire can go on.

Me: All of us?

Mitch: Sure. We can go over there which was the ride that took us almost an hour to stand in line, or we can do this one. *pointing upwards*

Me: O.o (in my best Penny voice) Oh, okay, what the hell.

Before we went down the slide of DEATH!

It's all fun and games before the slide of DEATH! Photographic proof that we were up for the challenge. You didn't want to see the photographic proof of what I looked like afterwards. Hint: It wasn't pretty I can assure you. Poor Little Ms. C, she was SO SCARED! She now knows the word scared now AND what it means to be scared. We've probably scared her for life from big water park slides.

Lucky to be alive, she's checking out her Peter Pan shadow.

Mitch, Roo, and Soph went down in one raft leaving Little Ms. C and I to go down in a raft with a very large couple. The guy had to be 6' 6'' or 6' 7'' and his lady friend wasn't much smaller. Physics really wasn't on our side. Between the big guy, the big girl, and myself with Claire, we made a pretty crappy triangle. Good news was we made it down in one piece though, so that was good. 

My parents had agreed to drive the six hours south, and meet us at in The Dells for dinner, stay the night, then whisk the kids north to CCF the next morning, giving Mitch and I some much needed alone time. We had a hard time deciding exactly where to go to dinner, but I must admit, if you have children, or have a train enthusiast, like I do (Mitch) this is a great place to eat! 

Awesome place to eat!

It really isn't too expensive, plus it distracts the children. There is also an arcade attached which is quite helpful if the food runs long. We had a great waiter who we had to guess his age. Roo guessed he was 36, Dad guessed he was 22. The poor fella was 21. Way to go Roo! This all started because I called the waiter, "Son." Which then started the conversation about age. So in all honesty it was all my fault.

Trains!

So back to the trains! When there isn't food to be served the train rolls around with little stuffed animals, and toys to play with for the little ones. It's quite an ingenious idea really, plus the decor was FANTASTIC! I was in love with all the log cabin like features. 

Bringing precious cargo…beer!

So after dinner we decided to go visit the arcade. Seriously they had a Zoltar machine. I wanted to play it, but didn't want to get any bigger than I was feeling already. See what I did there? 

You know it's a wicked cool place when you've got this!

So Little Ms. C is like two going on 16, and all she wanted to do was drive this double decker bus! We had the grandest time jumping in, and jumping out, pretending to be her passengers. It must be awesome to be the littlest sister.

She's driving!!! EVERYBODY MOVE!

The next day my awesome parents took the girls north so that Mitch and I could have some down time where we didn't have to worry about diapers, naps, feeding schedules, Buddy's, stuffed animals, crying, fighting, or whining. It seriously was the best vacation I'd been on EVER I think! Even better than Ireland when we went in 2000.

Our first stop was The Dells Mining Company to sift for goodies! I've included the link.

www.dellsminingco.com

We ended up getting two buckets. We had a good time sifting thru the sand, putting the sifter thru the water, and just watching what gems were coming to the surface. This is like rock hound heaven for me. It was such a great way to relax!

Some of our loot!

This picture above was after the first bucket. 

The rest of our glorious haul!

This was what we ended up with, lots of Amethyst, Garnet, Rose Quartz, regular Quartz, Labradorite, Green Tourmaline, Topaz, and Citrine just to name a few. I think we might get a rock tumbler for Roo, and tumble these for her. She's a rock hound too just like her mama. 

Next we tootled around The Dells in search of goodies. We found huge candy shops, and cheese shops too! We also found chocolate, and tons of HUGE caramel apples! If you want to gain like 10lbs on a vacation this is the place to do it. I'm telling you I probably gained that on this trip...

CANDY! Chocolate Mint & Birthday Cake!

I totally should have bought some of these. Just saying!

Chocolate SHOES!

After the touristy things we decided to go exploring. Mitch noticed the Dam, and wanted to take some pictures. So we stopped, got out, and I went exploring. There was a tiny beach on both sides of the dock so off I went. I'll tell you what, my favorite beaches have pinecones on them. 

Dam…Dam Dam

Happiness is Exploring!

I'm in my element when I'm exploring. I'm at peace looking around for things that other people might miss. I like finding little treasures in the sand, under a rock, next to a bottle cap. I think I might be my happiest when I'm out in nature just being in the moment.

The better half doing what he does best.

To say "we" took a lot of pictures is probably the understatement of the year! Seriously, I'm married to a photo teacher, and after almost nine years of marriage, I've picked up a camera, and a lesson or two.

Crazy huge grove of trees!

We stayed in The Dells for two days, and hit most of the things we wanted to hit. It was a nice time, and I was wrong, I admit it, stopping in The Dells was much better than I ever expected it to be. For the record, it was a GREAT idea. One we might have to replicate in the future. 

If you are ever close to Madison, WI, and you have children, it's worth the extra drive to The Dells. 

I wasn't disappointed.

More posts to come from WI and MI!

Stay tuned.