Waterpark Capital of the World

Feeding a giraffe at Timbavati Wildlife Park

A typical vacation will come around when you least expect it.  You plan, you talk, you think think think and, just when you say to yourself, 'that's months from now' it grabs your ankles and shakes you upside-down stealing your change.  It's the American way -- living from one vacation to the next and saving the dimes and nickels for that upcoming hoorah lit up in a multi-day green on a personal Google calendar.  Warn the coworkers, the boss, and set an auto-response in the email.  You're out, and the choir is on call.

Wisconsin Dells, it's our midwestern haven full of slow-moving tourists.  A trap set for the sticky sun-kissed families excited for the getaway, and thrilled that there are options for those not prepared for Disney World, financially or nerve-relatedly.  Friends are the best part about vacation.  If you aren't merged in a compatible crowd then vacation will often feel like you are skiing through sludge.  For this vacay, Adam and I tagged alongside two other couples for the weekend in Wisconsin Dells -- Waterpark Capital of the World.  Rachel and Nate planned this trip for celebrating Rachel's 27th birthday -- she's always loved the Dells.  Their friends, Brittany and Nick, had been invited.  Goofy buncha people.  Definitely know how to have a good time with each other.  They are close  ...butt-grabbingly so...

We, of course, eat.  Consume.  Vacation is a time of easing the boundaries, where once there were electric fences and a mine field temporarily becomes tenderly plowed and planted.  This is most evident in food choices, type and quantity [I slowly chewed the head of a Swedish Fish as my hand whimsically danced around the perimeter of a Doritos Jalepeno-flavored chip.  Dangerous food combinations later neutralized by two 1am fruit flavored Tums.]  Someone suggested an underwear party.  Someone laughed.  We leave and hit up a second winery before skipping to a tattoo shop.  Rachel is eager to get some permanent paint in the shape of a rose.  Could I be that bold to get one with her?  Should I have made this decision at the conception of a Dells trip? -- I should have made that decision at the conception of a Dells trip.  I should have known, Rachel, by our third experience getting tattoos at random times.   I should have known.

Three couples embarked nauseously to a summer Saturday at Noah's Ark, where all $20 preferred parking is taken, but the Rattl'r squeezed into it's $15 out-in-the-sticks parking pushing over just one blue recycling barrel.  [Just the one though, we good.]  Kendricks' "King Kunta" played loudly from the bass amp in the center of the vehicle -- Adam braked and we unloaded into the hot sun.  It's ironic how one could so thirsty in a place with seemingly endless water.  And it's strange how our Wisconsin-white skin will deepen into a radiated vermillion even after four coats of SPF 50.  And it's silly that I can run 5 miles every day, but I climb a small tower of stairs to the top of an aqua-coaster and my lungs desperately heave around the air.  Water rides are fun, and gimmicky, and takes you to a state of child-like naivety where you see the world as you used to.  I imagined the Big Kahuna was the ocean, and we were all survivors from a ship that sank, waiting for the rescue crew.  The Black Anaconda became real, and I was being guzzled into the dark mouth of a monster -- though I cut open the belly of the beast and survived our encounter.  Others enjoying the park turned into the unknowing victims of the end-of-the-world.  My world.  They wouldn't survive.

That evening we went downtown to enjoy the nightlife.  Downtown, there seemed to be lines of drinking bachelors and bachelorettes itching for the opportunity to prove they were still sexy, desirable, and had killer dance moves.  I understood completely.  What's better: pining for that gaze from good-looking individual, or busting out a secret stash of dances without regard to persons? ...Okay, sure, dancing, but that's what we had Adam for.  (Who else could have showed up Ice Cube himself?  Fine, not really thee Cube -- his doppleganger.)

The gang needed breakfast the next morning, and we headed to Mr. Pancake to wait.  I don't care if you don't eat breakfast, I don't, but nothing quite beats the smell of the morning-time food.  Not to mention the darling coloring placements where I used waxy crayons to form a primary-colored happy-world.  Snake-bellied, the crew wanted to start wrapping up the trip.  So, after breakfast we parted and Adam and I took the Rattl'r to Timbavati Wildlife Park right on the main strip in town.  It was so hot -- over 90 degrees, I'd say.  But there is just something about animals that is magnetic for us.  We spent hours viewing and talking to the animals.  We fed the giraffes.  Adam held the hand of a monkey and we both gave a thoughtfully satisfying scratch to the head of an emu.  [*sigh* If heaven were on earth...]

And that's where it really ended.  We, of course, trekked northwest towards the familiar 'home,' but the excitement lingered in the air, mixed with the anxiety that awaited us as we would fit into the old routine.  Reminders came to me slowly of old rituals that defined us as contributing humans of our Eau Claire populous.  Monday, I clean.  Tuesday, I work.  But, in between the days, I dream.  I dream of real life and the list of work projects I have waiting for me.  It quickly fades, and I dream of flying into the warm oranges of the sunset.  It then morphs into the Big Kahuna -- it is bigger, like an ocean -- that eventually dissolves into a bluish-black.