OK, so maybe it ain’t this, but it was more than enough to keep the kiddos happy during our recent day trip to Story Land.
Granted, the inside was a bit rundown, and Cinderella looked like the wicked stepsisters had forced her to do a few too many chores, but still …
Travel tip for all you parents out there: If you’d like to take your kids on a nature hike to see a spectacular waterfall in the mountains, don’t do it less than 24 hours after taking them to an enormous amusement park, because if you do, your kids will tell nature to go suck it.
Yes, the morning after we went to Story Land, the weather again was beautiful, and seeing as how we were in the White Mountains and all, we decided we should take in some of the natural splendor of the region … so we checked out of the hotel — oh, wait: the hotel! Lemme back up and tell you about that for a minute, because it, too, contributed significantly to the children’s general ennui about the amazing site to which we dragged them on Monday.
So, after we left Story Land, we checked into our hotel, which was actually much nicer than what I had been expecting … and since Wonder Woman had booked it at a comparatively el cheapo rate, this was a pleasant surprise.
The kids were raring to get in the pool, but we opted to do dinner first, because we wanted to see if they really would cramp up and sink to the bottom if they swam right after eating, since that’s what our parents always told us would happen.
Their enthusiasm about getting to the pool had not diminished during the course of dinner, and when I ended up being the one holding everybody up so that I could finish my mostly full pint of beer, Wonder Woman, in a moment of parental brilliance, encouraged the children to tell me to chug it. Of course, I showed her, because I did chug it.
“Whoah!” said Zan, impressed by my display of rapid alcohol consumption. (Like any good parent, I like to show him things he can strive for as he gets older.)
“Well, that was completely inappropriate,” I said as we stood to leave, and, at that same instant, I realized that the young family at the table directly across from us had witnessed this impressive display of parenting genius. Fortunately, rather than staring at me with disdain, the father was trying to keep from bursting into a laughing fit, presumably because to do so would mean having to tell to his kids what was so funny, thereby leaving him with the choice of a.) lying, or b.) explaining binge drinking.
So, with our bellies full and our blood-alcohol content elevated, we set off to the pool, which I must say, was lovely. The sun was setting above the mountains as we moved back and forth (and back … and forth … and back and forth again) between the mushroom-fountain-equipped kiddie pool, and the family-friendly (read: 3.5 foot deep) regular pool. It was basically a conglomeration of parents who were sharing a collective moment of “Thank god we don’t have to coax the kids into the car right now and drive all the way home,” which made for a rather festive atmosphere.
Of course, the biggest challenge about spending the night with the kids at a hotel is the actual “spending the night” part.
“We should probably bring the guardrails on Jayna’s bed,” Wonder Woman said to me the night before our trip.
“Yeah, definitely,” I replied.
And then we both promptly forgot all about it.
This made for an interesting night, seeing as how I spent the first three hours of it springing out of bed and pushing Jayna back to the center of her cot every time my Hyper-Sensitive Parental-Alert Hearing jerked me awake after detecting the sound of her body getting too close to the unprotected edge (or the sound of her body slamming into the wall on the other side of the cot, and if you were in the room next to us that night: Sorry!)
“But Jon,” you say, “why not just put a chair or something up against the unprotected side of the bed?”
“Because,” I reply, “when I did that at the beach house this summer, I got woken up at 3 a.m. by a child saying that they didn’t like having a chair against their bed!”
Of course, when I realized that sleeping until 3 a.m. was a better deal than performing a rescue operation every five minutes, I placed not one, but two chairs next to her bed, and we all made it to the five o’clock hour.
The kids logged some more time in the pool before we checked out, as well as some time in the hotel’s playground … all of which gives you some idea why, when we parked and walked a whole half mile into the woods, the kids mostly yawned when we finally saw this:
To be fair, they did enjoy it for a short while …
But Zan was under the impression that he was going to get to do some serious swimming, which wasn’t really an option … and Jayna slipped and fell on her ass in the water fully clothed, despite Anxiety Man’s best efforts to warn everyone to be careful on the rocks and to not get to close to the edge of the big drop-offs, because they could slip and fall and wreck themselves, and am I the only one who envisions the worst-case scenario in every situation, and then spends most of the time trying to corral everyone in order to avoid said worst-case scenario? Because, boy, do I ever get twitchy in situations where the kids could, you know, plummet to their death … something about which the fearless Wonder Woman seems to be a bit more nonchalant … so, I suppose, between the two of us, it kind of balances out (which is my way of saying, “See? It’s a good thing that I’m sporting a borderline anxiety disorder!”).
And so, after spending 15 minutes stranded in the depths of the No Fun Forest, Zan declared that it was the worst day ever, and he couldn’t believe we made him leave the pool at the hotel in order to bring him to this evil place, and Jayna concurred. So back to the car we went.
Of course, they couldn’t walk that grueling half-mile trail back to the car, because they were too tired and their legs hurt and waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhfuckinwahhhhhhh! (Sorry; I get it out of my system here so I can tolerate it when I’m with them.) So, Jayna rode my shoulders most of the way back …
… while Zan kept asking Mommy to pick up his 75-pound ass and carry him, which wasn’t an option that Mommy was particularly interested in entertaining.
We eventually switched kids, and Zan rode piggy-back style the rest of the way, and I got a nice leg workout while pretending I was back in the army and he was my fully-loaded rucksack.
Finally, thank mercy, we emerged from the depths of the boring, awful, not-a-pool-or-amusement-park-in-sight forest and loaded into the Scratchesmobile. And now we were faced with a decision: Do we bid New Hampshire adieu and head home, or do we try to salvage the day by seeking out the kind of sensory-overloading fun for which the kids were so yearning?
Well, I had the day off, and it was barely noon, and sweet mother, was it ever beautiful out, so I made a command decision to head not south, but north! Because sometimes? Sometimes, I’m just nutty like that. A total wild man. Stand back, y’all; Mr. Spontaneity coming through. (Carefully, though. Be careful. Don’t get too close to the edge; it’s slippery, and you could fall and hurt yourself.)
Much to our delight, the decision to throw caution to the wind and venture further into the mountains turned out to be the right one … because, man, did we end up showing the kids a good time.
To be continued …
[I swear, I only planned on recapping this whole trip in a single entry ... and I was sure that two entries would be more than enough ... but when I cracked 1,300 words on this one, and my eyes started to glaze over, and the very real threat of the incredibly cool tale that follows getting short shrift presented itself, I decided to go with another trilogy ... but I swear, this won't turn into a quadruplology like that whole "My Summer Vacation" saga did.]
Well, that’s it. Summer’s pretty much over, and Zan’s off to college, and I can’t write much more about it right now, because I have to get back to filling out the form for my AARP membership.
How did this all happen so fast??
He started first grade today. First. Grade. My son. The kid who I couldn’t believe just started kindergarten a few weeks ago, and — What’s that? That was a year ago??
Clearly someone’s been slipping roofies into my iced tea. That’s the only plausible explanation for these massive and sudden leaps forward in my personal timeline. Whichever one of you is responsible for drugging me: Please stop.
There’s not much to say. The kid did great. He was only there for a few hours today, and that’ll remain the same for tomorrow and Friday. After that, he’s in school until 2:45 p.m. four days a week, and for half a day on Wednesdays, and it should be pretty interesting to see how he adapts to the huge increase of time spent in a classroom every day … and by “it should be pretty interesting,” I mean “it should make for some spectacular late-afternoon meltdowns.”
He has come so far so fast, and I really couldn’t be more proud of him. I hope first grade turns out to be a great experience for him. I know his mother and I will do everything we can to help make it so.
A lovely shot (if I do say so myself) of Diana’s Bath in North Conway, New Hampshire, which we visited the morning after our Story Land adventure. The kids staged a mutiny shortly after we arrived. Fortunately, our next destination was more to their liking … which I’ll tell you about in my next blog entry, coming soon. (Yes, I’m such a tease.)
Sorry for the delay getting this entry up, but I had to wait for John Travolta to swing by my place and stab me in the heart with an enormous, adrenaline-filled syringe … because I overdosed on fun this weekend.
(Sunday and Monday, actually, but “I overdosed on fun this past Sunday and Monday” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as nicely as “weekend,” so I took a little poetic license back there. My blog, my rules.)
Yes, Wonder Woman and I took the kids on an adventure of epic proportions — a 33-hour bonanza packed with more fun and excitement and joyful family bonding than I previously had thought was humanly possible in such a short span of time.
It all started earlier this summer, when Wonder Woman and I realized that our grand plan of taking the kids to Disneyworld this fall wasn’t going to happen, since it seems that the Disney Corporation doesn’t consider as sufficient payment for such an excursion the promise of a guaranteed look of joy on my children’s faces upon their entry into the The Magical Kingdom. No, that Mickey is a selfish little cocksucker who answers only to the call of the almighty dollar, and he expects us to pay for airfare and lodging and admission to the park and souvenirs and snacks and meals, and so fuck you, you greedy little rodent, I’ll take my children’s mirth and joy elsewhere, and then you’ll be sorry, now, won’t you, you money-grubbing ratfuck?
Whoah. Sorry about that; the Mouse and I apparently have some issues to work out. Let’s save that for another time, though, shall we?
So, as I was saying …
’Round these parts, when you’re too poor to take your children to The Happiest Place on Earth, you take ’em to the Slightly Less Happy But Infinitely More Affordable Place In New Hampshire — a.k.a. Story Land.
We left our house at about 7:30 on Sunday morning and pointed the car toward the White Mountains of New Hampshire … and, as usual, our roadtrippin’ kids did a great job of tolerating the two-and-a-half-hour drive … especially considering that we misjudged it and told them it would be only two hours. Oops.
On Saturday, Mother Nature directed the streams from a thousand fully charged firehoses through a thousand turbine engines aimed diagonally downward, and do you know how happy I am we decided weeks ago to do a Sunday/Monday trip instead of a Saturday/Sunday trip? Because on Sunday, Mother Nature flipped open her recipe book to the page titled “How To Make The Most Perfect Day Ever,” and whipped up such a huge batch that there was plenty left over for Monday. Yes, it was that beautiful out.
Now, I don’t know if it was just because we were under the spell of the spectacularly spectacular weather, or the gorgeously gorgeous grandeur of our White Mountain surroundings, but I have to say that, overall, Story Land impressed the hell out of me. No, it wasn’t Disneyworld by any stretch of the imagination … but the degree to which Story Land isn’t Disneyworld is infinitely smaller than the degree to which the cost of going to Story Land differs from the cost of going to Disneyworld, and, with that in mind, our mini-vacation was a downright bargain.
Despite having grown up in New England, I’d never before been to Story Land, so I had not a clue what to expect — and, therefore, set my expectations extremely low. I was thinking something along the lines of a petting zoo with a few broken-down-looking goats and a couple of lame-ass, carnival-style rides — so imagine my surprise when I opened the map of the park and saw this. Suffice to say, the place turned out to be a more than passable Disneyworld substitute for our 6-year-old and 4-year-old. I mean, look at the oodles of fun they had:
(Note to prospective parents: when your children do something such as pose in the manner demonstrated above, you will momentarily forget about all of the child-related chaos and bullshit that generally fills your day. Savor it.)
And here we see them busting a move in one of the many rain tents located throughout the park, in any one of which my apparently amphibious son would have spent the entire day:
They also enjoyed stopping at the top of the ferris wheel:
So, yes, it turned out Story Land was more than up to the challenge of entertaining our little family.
But it wasn’t just the sheer size and scope of the place that surprised me; it was how well-maintained and clean it was. Hell, when I walked into one of the restrooms, there was a college-age employee diligently spraying with disinfectant the already immaculate walls and urinals. (Being the germophobe that I am, I considered this my honorary Ride of the Day.)
Story Land wasn’t the only thing that impressed the hell out of me this weekend; Zan’s display of cojones did, too.
Yes, my son — who, as documented in “My Summer Vacation, Part IV,” was traumatized by his experience aboard an inappropriate-for-his-age ride that we inadvertently placed him on last year — came up big by deciding he wanted me to take him on Dr. Geyser’s Remarkable Raft Ride. This was, by far, the most grown-up ride he’s ever been on, and though he clearly was experiencing some serious nerves as we waited in line, he was adamant about wanting to do it, so I just played along and tried to keep him upbeat and in the zone … you know, by saying things like, “I’m almost positive we won’t drown” and “Hey, how long can you hold your breath underwater?” (I’m just kidding, assholes. I kept it lighthearted as all hell, and happily held his hand for the entire ride, per his request.)
The hardest impact we encountered took place early in the ride … and, of course, the majority of the concussive force converged on his seat; if he hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, I’d still be looking for him. Fear flashed across his face for a moment, but I helped him laugh it off, and he recovered quickly.
It turned out that there weren’t any subsequent collisions of that magnitude … but there was water aplenty.
By the time we got off the ride, I was soaked, and he was jacked up on an adrenaline rush brought on by both the ride itself, and the post-ride realization that he had conquered his fear. Perhaps to prove to himself that it wasn’t just a fluke, he later dragged Mommy back onto the ride for a second pass — and again declared that he loved it. Thatta boy, dude.
And that wasn’t the only bit of extreme boundary-pushing my boy did this weekend; just wait till I tell you about Monday …
To be continued …
I know, I know: yet another cliffhanger. Sorry; Zan starts first grade in seven hours, and I really need to get a little shuteye between now and then. Hang in there; I’ll make it worth the wait. And, hey, here’s a little bonus Scratches Family at Story Land photo to tide you over … because I give. That’s what I do. I’m a giver.
Does a dinosaur GLARE?
One of the books Jayna frequently chooses at bedtime is “How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?,” in which a two-page layout of a grumpy-looking brontosaurus is accompanied by the question, “Does a dinosaur GLARE?” … and each time I read that question, Jayna demonstrates for me her ability to glare … which, clearly, she has perfected.
And I know some of you are looking at me with this same expression right now, and you’re saying, “Dude, where the hell is Part III of that White Mountains mini-vacation story you were telling us?”
It’s coming … tomorrow. Sorry; my blogging time the past few days has been dedicated to upgrading my publishing system to the latest version of WordPress, and if the folks at WordPress are listening: OK, I’m all set with updates for a looooooong time, guys! Let’s stick with this version for a while, shall we??