Grandma and Grandpa invited me and Chris and the kids to join them on a trip to Schlitterbahn this past Saturday. Someone that works at the same school where my mom works had 4 free tickets that she was trying to give away because she wasn't going to be able to use them before the park closed for the season. Mom was the first to email her back, so she got them and we all got to have fun without the expense of having to buy our own tickets.
This was Zachary and Ashley's first trip to Schlitterbahn, so I really could not let the chance escape me to take pictures of this momentous occasion. I did take our digital camera, but for fear of ruining it, we left it in our locker and ended up taking pictures with waterproof cameras that Grandpa bought at the gift shop. I will have to develop the pictures and scan them later so you can see the great time we had.
Zachary LOVED Schlitterbahn! Of course, I had been preparing him for this trip early on by dumping cups full of water over his head during his baths from the time he was just a baby and saying, "Schlitterbahn--woohoo!" He also enjoys sliding down the side of the tub into the water, which he calls the "Schlitterbahn Slide." Silly times...
The water, at first, was pretty cold. The longer we stood around waiting to go under for the first time, the more we realized we were just going to have to bite the bullet and just do it. The only one who really couldn't get over the cold water was Ashley. She was NOT happy at all! Grandma offered to stay with her while the rest of us went on our first ride, the Hillside Tube Chute. I was slightly nervous about how Zachary would do, but he did GREAT! Of course, both kids were equipped with lifejackets and mesh-bottomed child safety tubes, so that did keep me from worrying too much. I still expected, however, that there would be some rough water that may toss Zachary out at some point. I was prepared to have to abandon my own tube and rescue my little boy somewhere along the way. I was amazed at how stable his tube remained the entire day. He didn't fall out even once! He really enjoyed floating around in the tube and going over the bumpy hills and down the slippery slopes of the tube chutes. While he might have gotten a little nervous seeing the bigger drops along our routes, he didn't seem scared. He later said that his favorite part of Schlitterbahn was the "water tubes".
Grandpa watched Ashley so Grandma could go with us down the Hillside chute the second time. Meanwhile, Ashley enjoyed the snacks immensely. There is nothing like a trip to Schlitterbahn to give us an excuse to load up on the junk! After our ride, we ate lunch and headed over to the Kinder Lund for some of the kiddie attractions and waterslides. Ashley had a blast there and got over her initial upset at being stuck in that cold water. The water in the kiddie area was warmer and she RULED that park! Grandma enjoyed splashing around with Ashley there while Grandpa and Daddy and I took Zachary down the Whitewater Tube Chute. That one has a very steep drop right at the beginning, and I thought Zachary would really be afraid. Once again, though, he proved himself to be brave as he plummeted down the huge slope. It was really a sight to see! I tried to get some pictures, so hopefully the ones I took will turn out well.
The funniest thing happened when we got to the end of our ride down the Whitewater chute. Zachary and I were the first in our group to make it to the end. I helped Zachary climb out of his tube as Grandpa came cruising toward us. He asked where Chris was, because it appeared that Chris got held up somewhere behind us. We finally spotted him from the walkway where we were standing, and as we waited for him to complete the course, a little man with a thick Spanish accent started pointing at something in the river on the other side of the fence that separated us from the river. He was saying something about a shoe and a baby while pointing at Zachary. I thought he was trying to tell me that the shoe in the river looked just like the kind of shoes Zachary was wearing. It took me a minute to register that Zachary was wearing only one shoe and that it was HIS shoe floating down the river. It had been swept off at the end of the ride, as I was helping him out of his tube, and the current had sucked it through the gate where the water drained back into the river. It was completely beyond our ability to get his shoe, and at first I thought we'd be saying "Adios" to that shoe. However, the man, in his broken English, pointed as if to tell us that there were some employees in that direction that might be able to help with this search and rescue effort. I quickly began walking that way, thinking that I'd surely lose sight of this shoe before I found someone to help me, but the shoe stayed afloat and could be spotted several feet downstream. When I finally arrived at the point where the employees were tossing tubes that had been rescued from the river back into the fenced holding area, I saw no way to communicate with them. There was a mountain of tubes separating us, not to mention the end of another waterslide. Chris followed behind me, and I was just about to give up when he decided to ask the lifeguards at the end of the slides if they could ask the men in the river to drive their powered "boat" to where they could rescue Zachary's Croc. In a moment of sheer victory, the men drove right up to the shoe, which had almost got caught in some branches along the shore (still separated from us by this fence between us), and one of the men leaned over the side of his cruiser, pulled the shoe from the water and threw it over the fence so we could take it back to Zachary, who, I'm sure, was afraid he'd never see his prized Croc, a much-loved present from his Favorite Chia Wendy, ever again. It was an amazing rescue!
No sooner had we celebrated this shoe that was lost and then found, then we had another incident of a missing Croc. I took Zachary to meet Grandma and Ashley at the Kinder Lund park, while Grandpa and Chris took our tubes back to our picnic table. We were all going to meet up and get on the tram to Surfenburg when the guys returned, but in the meantime, Ashley was not ready to leave the kiddie park. I decided to take her down one of the slides. Zachary went down one slide, with Grandma waiting at the end to catch him, while Ashley and I teamed up down the adjacent slide. We had a great ride and then made our way to the other side of the pool to the Bullfrog Slide. It wasn't until I was pushing Ashley down the frog's "tongue" that I noticed she was only wearing one of her bright pink Crocs. Arrrrgh!!!!!! I retraced our steps and didn't see it immediately. I was just thinking that our luck had perhaps run out on us when I spotted the shoe "glowing" from the other side of the pool. It had fallen off during our trip down the slide and someone had found it and placed it up next to a tree on the pavement. As Zachary would say, "Whew! That was close!"
On the tram ride to Surfenburg, Ashley fell asleep. After all, it was naptime, and so she and I dozed in a chair the shade while everyone else enjoyed cruising along in the brisk current of the Kristal River. This area is Grandma's all-time favorite part of Schlitterbahn. Eventually, when Ashley woke up, we joined her and Grandpa for a few spins around the circle. It was really great. Our time there ended when Zachary needed a diaper change, so we headed back over to Schlitterbahn West and took care of that before Zachary and Chris and I made our final trip of the day: an encore performance down the Whitewater Tube Chute.
What a fun day we all had!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment