Rewind a bit. I met Nicole at her place, which is being packed up because she and her husband are moving to a house! Much excitement! (I also met her cats, and little Olive stole my heart -- don't tell Jasmine. Well, it's ok. We seem to have unlimited quantities of heart when it comes to the kitties.)
Drove over to Soak City, got easy parking.... I can't prove it, but it looks like they just took part of the Knott's parking lot and made it a water park. (On the theory that they could make more money per square inch by charging $40+ admission per person rather than $18 per car. They're probably right.)
Obligatory photo!
There are no further photos. This (like Glen Ivy with Alice) is the second time where we followed website directions about cameras and cell phones only to discover there was rather more flexibility. The website had been very particular about no loose items on the rides, but we saw a bunch of people who were told they couldn't wear their water shoes on the ride so just had to hold them all the way down. I very likely could have kept my little plastic waterproof camera with me; hell, it had a rubber wristband (unlike the water shoes). Sigh.
SO. We got there when it was still early, and the park was still pretty empty. I said I wanted to do at least one fun/scary one, and then we could just hang on the lazy river, or whatever. (You'll note the 50 for 50 was actually "waterslide" not "water park.")
We're just trying to pick a slide at random. The signage is less than helpful. Nothing actually SAYS "enter here"; "grab inner tube here"; or "leave your damn shoes." We sort of had to figure it out. (And we went the wrong way trying to find the entrance for a slide on a little island. "Where's the freakin' bridge?!") But we finally found the entrance, grabbed, tubes, left shoes, and climbed the tower for the first water slide. This one had three tubes heading down -- so we went down more or less simultaneously. They were enclosed, and you didn't quite know what was happening; but along the journey, there were little openings in the top of the tube where water poured in on your head. That was an attention-getter, but the ride wasn't particularly scary.
We decide that (despite them having called that one a 5 out of 5 action slide) these are not that big of a deal, so we'd ride another. That one has 3 tubes, two closed and one open to the top. We ride a closed one, and it's fun, so we go back to ride the open one. Each is ridden with an inner tube.
While we're going up the stairs to ride the second time, we notice some people climbing the stairs without inner tubes, and they're passing the entry to this ride to go up ANOTHER flight to another landing where there's another ride. It just shares the stairs. Okay then. We'd glanced at it coming in, and I'd thought it looked fun, so we decide to try that one. It has two open slides and one closed one. I'd enjoyed the open one last time, while Nicole preferred the closed, so that decision was pretty much made for us. I hadn't actually, um, looked very closely at the two open ones, so I hadn't really thought through which one of the two open ones I wanted to ride. Woman at the top of the ride offered me one, so I went for it.
I may have gotten a little nervous when she explained, "cross your ankles; cross your arms across your chest; lean back all the way down." (But those other dudes were doing it while holding their water shoes, so it's ok, right?) Feet first, assume position, slide down, and...
Holy Kittens!
Gravity, gravity, gravity, gravity, WATER!
I looked back at it. Looked like this:
I'd apparently taken that orange-yellow one in the center -- the straight shot down without any little bumps to slow you down. Now THAT, kids, is a Waterslide. Mission Accomplished!
Somehow the whole "one big slide and then the lazy river" plan was shot. We thought we'd try more fun ones instead. We did a "family" slide which wasn't super scary, but we rode it together; and then a head-first one where you slid down on mats (and they sent six people down at once, so we could race!) It went well, but about partway down the one with the mat, I realized I did not have proper form -- was supposed to have my arms straight in front of me (holding the handles on the mat) but instead my elbows were bent and my head was closer to the front. Couldn't really adjust myself so I figured I'd just deal, at which second my sled hit the big pool at the bottom and the massive splash hit me square in the face. Which was how I got more wet on the, easy, category 4 slide than on the six-storey category 5 speed drop.
There was really only one other category 5 slide left at the park; but by now, the place was getting crowded and the lines for that one didn't seem worth it. So, we rinsed off and bailed. Lesson: You can pretty much do all the action slides in this park in about an hour and a half -- if you start early enough.
Then we went out for burgers and shakes, which was pretty ideal for two near-drowned rats.
Along the way, I learned a bit more about Nicole -- we're coworkers, but haven't had tons of time (other than lunches) to actually socialize. So I learned that she and her husband were college sweethearts (awwww), and that they got their first kitty right after they got married, and where they'd moved, and how they found the house, and all that other good stuff.
(Then I came home, took what Peggy amusingly called a "Silkwood shower," and crashed on the sofa. These 50 for 50 things seem to end with crashing on the sofa more and more. Worth it!)
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