We succumbed to the dreaded end-of-summer family vacation, we tolerated the kitsch of the aging road-side amusement park.
We came, we saw, he conquered!
We had plans with other families for the Labor Day weekend but they fell through about mid-July. Then we shifted to visiting family, but that too disintegrated. By mid-August after every hotel room anywhere near the beach (our Plan C) was booked, we turned landward again in an effort to give it just one more shot. We have been a little beat-down by the summer in a lot of ways. I think I would have cried if we had all this time off around the holiday and didn't get a chance to escape for a few days. Then someone said something about Dutch Wonderland. Dutch what?
Think back, way back before Six Flags, Busch Gardens or Disney World, when in almost every city there were amusement parks planted right along side the local highway. Most had themes with lots of fiberglass storybook and fairytale characters, small colorful rides, miniature trains, a colorful ferris-wheel that wasn't but fifty feet tall. We aren't talking about the g-force, gut-wrenching high-tech rollercoasters or anything like that. We're talking schmaltz and kitsch and ever-lasting memories of spinning, twirling, rocking rides. Most of them are long gone. I remember Lincoln City, Oregon as a kid. It was as road-side a park as you could get--tiny rollercoaster, carousel with octopus and unicorns, donkey rides and really tall slides--but I imagine it no longer exists. I suspect it was dismantled long ago probably to make way for a condo complex or a shopping mall.
But there is one that still exists--Dutch Wonderland. And as the name suggests it's dripping with kitsch from the fiberglass life-sized but definitely not life-like Pennsylvania Dutch people to the gigantic salted pretzel.
In all seriousness, it was a fantastic place to take Ty that included a ride on a motorized car, a carousel, playing in a water park designed for little kids, and riding a train that circled the park. The great thing about the train was that there were seven or eight railroad crossings along the walking paths throughout the park, complete with lighted warning signs and moving gates. I don't know if Ty was more excited riding the train or watching it pass by as it moved through the park. You might notice from the picture below that Ty has this horrified look while riding the carousel with Darrow. He is actually shouting at the train passing behind me.
Without question the thing Ty would remember most if he could remember anything at all at his age would be the water park. He was a maniac, stomping on the ground where the water spouted up, sticking his head in the squirting fountains, squealing at other children who also splashed about. He even had a lot of fight left in him when I went to take off his suit and dress him. He continued to play and wrestle me during the diaper change. And though the park has been around for decades it clearly has not lost any of its appeal. Ty was sound asleep in the stroller before we even got him back to the car.
And though the park was a lot of fun, the hotel room had its own charms. Take a California King bed, a nice set of sheets and lots of fluffy pillows and you have one great playroom. I guess I was a bad daddy and let him jump on the bed and on me. We played pillow fight--actually I hit him with the pillows and he laughed hysterically. We had waffles in the hotel lobby--it was our own little hotel wonderland.
Some of the things we took away from Dutch Wonderland:
- This place was a blast, close by and we should go back
- We don't go away enough and sometimes just a night in a hotel can be fun
- Ty is becoming a little boy
-- J
