Hoo boy, I have been working on this post for forever and a day. How long you ask? Well, let’s just say I had this in my notes:

On our way up, we passed a sign that said, “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” and showed a picture of cows dressed as leprechauns standing next to a rainbow which ended in a pot of cheese curds.

Me: “That is the most Wisconsin sign I have ever seen.”

I tried to get a picture while I was driving, but it didn’t turn out.

So, we made a return visit to Timber Ridge, an indoor waterpark in Wisconsin (you can read about our previous trip here).

If anything, we had an even better time that last year. This year the kids were a little bit older, and we were able to give them more of a free reign to run around and do whatever they wanted.

As I said last time, one night is about the max amount of time we would want to spend there. You can go to the water park before you check in, and you can stay after you check out, so one night translates into two very full days. This time we also took advantage of some of the other activities offered by the hotel, such as cookie decorating and watching the most god awful movie.

Last year we restricted ourselves to the “green slide”, since you could ride a double raft with a grown up, but this year Ollie wanted to do the “yellow slide”, solo.

Even though he knows how to swim, I decided to go down first so I could wait for him at the bottom. However, as I was on my way down I thought, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

The slide is completely dark, super fast, and relatively terrifying. I thought, “This is WAY too scary for Oliver!” I figured when I got him at the bottom, he would be a quivering, sobbing mess.

Silly me! He loved it!

After Ollie’s rave reviews, Evelyn was brave enough to try it, and then the two of them went down it over and over and over again. Oliver, in particular, couldn’t get enough of it.

The only time he almost backed out is when we were getting ready to go down the second time, and one of the kids noticed that I had blood streaming down my leg from where I had gotten a friction burn from the slide (I’m telling you, it was a fast slide!). “I don’t want to get bloody!” said Ollie, backing up, but we were already at the top so I convinced him to at least go down that one last time, and then he had such a good time he didn’t want to stop.

“Do you do something to go faster?” asked Sara.
“Uh…I don’t know,” I said. “I try to keep aerodynamic I guess. Why?”
“Because, when you come out of the slide, you make a huge wave. There was a new lifeguard who didn’t exactly look thrilled to be there, and your wave completely dunked her.”

I did notice that when I came up from under the water, I was usually nose-to-nose with a terrified looking lifeguard, trying to block me from smashing into the wall, but I just said, “sorry” and didn’t think anything of it.

Evie still prefered the green slide, but Ollie refused to go on it by himself after a little incident. I was watching the end of the slide when Ollie came shooting out without his raft. The lifeguard said, “Where’s your raft?” and Ollie said, “I don’t know”, like, “how should I know?”

Probably like 3 minutes later his raft came shooting out by itself. Ollie had fallen off about 3 feet from the entry of the slide (the lifeguard up top had seen him fall off) and spent the rest of the ride trying to “slow down so [he] could catch [his] raft”. He definitely felt like he was going to get in trouble, and he didn’t want to risk it after that (I’m still not sure how he managed to fall off).

Alex spent most of the day just sitting poolside and observing, though he did find time to get into the water a little bit (which he loves!)

At the end of the day, we were all wiped out, even Alex. I will count that as a successful trip!