The Dells Vacation

Our Wisconsin Dells vacation was a resounding success! My wife's side of the family had a presidential suite at a resort called The Wilderness that bids itself as 'Americas largest waterpark resort' and I would not doubt the claim! Our condo consisted of 4 bedrooms 2 king size bed's and 4 full size beds in which we slept 8 adults and 7 kids very comfortably. It also had a large living room with a huge flat screen TV kitchen and dining area as well as washer and driers in the room. The large deck was great for a late night cigar or pipe tobacco and a beer.

We had little need to leave the resort area as there were 7 different waterparks to keep us occupied. On the second day there we discovered The Hurricane (pictured above) which we could not get enough of. Zach and Ally loved this ride however Andrew was not quite tall enough for this monster, but there were plenty of other slides (both indoors and out) that he could scream about! We discovered that if we put more weight on a tube (up to 4 people) we could get quite a bit higher and further challenged ourselves to touch the piping half way up the tubing. While we were unsuccessful in the endeavour, there was a whole lot of humor in trying and no one even fell off the tube (amazingly enough)

Beyond the water, water and more water there were arcade rooms and an indoor playground. One of the few trips off the resort was to visit Pirates Cove for some mini-golf. The kids enjoyed golf (even little belle who always over shot the hole -- the one on the far left in the picture) although it was a hot day to be out in the sun.

It looks like our pirate was glad we were there too.

We happened to be there on the 4th and our Resort's fireworks were set off right out our 4th floor balcony. You could almost reach out and touch them. Now watching fireworks from your balcony is the epitome of convenience, espically when you have 5 kids that are exausted from running around waterparks in the sun all day long! We never had a problem putting them to bed an night. And we never even made it to see the actual 'Dells'. Those Duck tours were quite expensive and our 4 night stay just did not give us enough time to do everything. I do want to at least take one tour of what made the area so popular to begin with at some time.

Four of us adults (not my fetching wife however) decided to take an evening away from the kids and take a leap at bungee Jumping! This was absolutely the most thrilling (for lack of a better term) and insane thing I have ever done. it is completely indescribable. It seems (or has always seemed to me) a bit innocuous, but I am here to tell you it is not. There is nothing like standing 130' up staring down knowing you are about to fall off this perfectly good 'cage'. To the left is a picture from the actual cage which I jumped out of (but that is obviously not me and I did not go 'backwards' -- one thing at a time!)

There is a video of my jump and I'll post it if I can get it into the right format. You may be able to see the fear in my eyes as the cage reaches its zenith and I realize what I am about to do.

Here's a picture I took of the 'bungiee tower' just after the jump (yes it really is that high):

A special thanks to the Landrys who's time share paid for just about everying on the trip. The kids and all of us had a great time!