There was still a couple of things that we had to do this morning before we could leave. We had to check on all the animals and double feed them to make sure that they had enough for overnight. This meant to have both water and feed for the chickens and dogs for a couple of days. Now I’m now sure what Little Kitty was going to do, but I guess he could hang out with the dogs if he wanted to. And for the cows? Daryl ended up getting a new bale of hay for them. We just hated to do this, but without a lot of sunshine these past few weeks, the cows have the pasture grass almost gone. Now that everyone should be settled in for the next two days – off we went. Have you ever felt that you just wanted to go somewhere and it really didn’t matter where you went but just somewhere? Well that’s how I felt and so I was really excited for this weekend. We took the new car to see both how it handled in city traffic and if it worked out OK.
The first stop was the amusement park – Valley Fair. 
It’s been quite a few years since we’ve been here and I just knew it was going to be fun. There has been some issues this past month with it being flooded and some of the park being underwater, but the only thing that we saw that it really impacted was the parking. There were a couple of their parking lots closed down and were flooded. Now some people tell us that we’re crazy to go to an amusement park on any Holiday because it’s so busy. But we tell them that this is the best time because there is so much other stuff going on that it’s not busy at all. And this year, yup maybe only about 1/4 of the normal crowd. Score for us! To start out the day we headed for the roller coaster called the Wild Thing and they were right – it was a wild ride. But fun!! Since we were just getting warmed up we headed over to what looked like a giant swing. Now it didn’t look so bad but holy smokes when you were riding it you were really high in the air. The structure is 100 feet high and you swing 125 feet up in the air at 60 mph.
Xtreme Swing
We found more roller coasters to go on and then we wanted to get to this one magic show. We were not sure what it was about, but we promised William’s girlfriend that there wouldn’t be any clowns. Yea.. you know what’s going to happen right? The opening act is all clowns. But it was only one act and then the Magician comes out. It was Ed Alonzo from the show Saved By The Bell.
I think Kyle would like to have seen this guy because he grew up with that show every morning before school. The show was fun and so was the whole day. The weather wasn’t hot or cold and it was pretty close to being perfect. So at the end of the day we picked out a couple of rides that we wanted to hit before we left for our hotel. The first one was the roller coaster Renegade. We rode it earlier and let me tell you that it is fun!! It stands 104 feet tall with a first hill and ride maximum drop of 91 feet at 52 mph . The track is 3,113 feet long, and the ride lasts around two minutes. This is also one that gets shut down due to the flooding of the Minnesota River, but we were glad that it was open today. I found out that this roller coaster was also featured on Discovery Channel’s Build It Bigger program. Pretty cool. So we’re walking the path to get to the coaster and all of a sudden people are coming back down. The car got stuck on the track. 
Now we’ve gone to a lot of amusement parks in our lifetime, but we’ve never seen a car stuck with people in it on the first drop. We ended up waiting and then decided to try something else instead. And just as we were leaving, they got the people out and we were back in business. 
There was also another thing that I’ve never even heard of before and much less see. It was a family dryer. This ride is close by and the people watching on the bridge get pretty wet.
The instructions say that for $5 you can blow dry your family. I wish someone would have done it when we were there. I think that would be so funny to see!
Another ride on the Wild Thing and then before we leave one more ride on the Steel Venom. Now this ride is a little different. It’s a roller coaster that sends you straight up into the air 185 feet and in less than four seconds you go 68 mph. 
Seriously, this is the only ride that makes my palms sweat. But it is a blast! William and I rode together on the last ride. 
After a long afternoon at the park, we were headed to find our hotel. Our car has GPS in it and it came in pretty handy to get us to the hotel. We ordered some Pizza and Wings to be delivered to our room and spent the night at the pools hot tub. What a great day we had!
The photo of the day is William and Daryl just hanging out. 