Minnesota Vacation, Part 3

Ok, so this is actually the Wisconsin Vacation post, but let's not be technical. My best friend from high school lives in Madison, WI. Most years I only see her once in the summer when we all meet up in Minneapolis. However, this year she has a little baby so I figured traveling just to meet up with us might be hard on them. Instead we all met up in the Wisconsin Dells. If you're from the midwest area, you probably know of it. Basically, it's a resort town filled with waterparks. We dubbed it the Vegas of Wisconsin while we were there. We stayed at a complex called The Wilderness. It has multiple waterparks both indoor and outdoor, and most of them feature a children's area right next to the bigger waterslides. It was perfect for our two families!

Brian and I got there mid-afternoon on a Thursday and checked in. Noah was pretty excited to play in water, so we went to one of the little kid areas while we waited for our friends to arrive. They got in around dinner time so we went straight for food. We tried to eat at a place that boasts Pop Rocks cheesecake, but it was too busy so we got some to go instead. Noah had a lot of fun eating the left over pop rocks after we got back to the hotel. He also thought it was fun to hold on to baby Thurston, but didn't quite understand how unstable an almost 6 month old is. Let's just say Thurston almost fell on the floor.

On Friday morning we ate brunch and then hit the waterslides! My friend Danna and I have always enjoyed thrill rides and took a week long "roller coaster road trip" to celebrate graduating college back in 2003. We took turns with the husbands watching the kids so that we could hit some of the more adventurous slides. One of them involved stepping into a clear plastic booth with a floor that drops out from under you and shoots you straight down. Another favorite had Danna and I on a tube together getting dropped into a giant half pipe. So much fun! When it was our turn to watch the kids, I took a few photos. It was hard to take many though because it was so wet and I was worried about wrecking my camera.

Noah spent some time with me practicing his jumping skills on the side of a smaller shallow pool. He was getting pretty brave until my arms couldn't take it anymore!

At the end of the day we drove to Madison to spend a night with our friends at their house. On the way we stopped for some Dairy Queen and Noah made a pretty good mess of himself in his carseat. 

The next day we drove back to my in-law's house, but stopped at my sister's farm in eastern Wisconsin for a short visit. My sister cooked us dinner and Noah got to meet her newest calf T.J. and play in a cornfield. 

All in all it was another really fun trip home. We did a ton of driving which was a bit of a drag, but I wouldn't change one part of it. I'm already looking forward to next year's trip!