A Roller Coaster of a Road Trip - Days 4 & 5

We were thrilled to check out of the creepy hotel on Wednesday morning, and stopped for some Dunkin' for breakfast.  As we were just getting going, we happened to see a basketball court.  We had been trying to find one for Jacob the whole trip, and it was a decent one with glass backboards.  I don't think it was in the best area--it looked like one of those low income neighborhoods that had been fixed up with newer houses, and there was a memorial full of wet stuffed animals and broken candles between two trees off to the side.  But it was early in the day and seemed fine.  There was a playground, too, which Carter loved.

Jacob got in some shots, and then it was time for a long drive up almost the entire state of New Jersey.  Oh, and did I mention we were going to be heading into the remnants of Hurricane Ida, which had devastated New Orleans earlier in the week?  Luckily we had planned a low key day of shopping since we knew it would rain for most of it.  It was actually fine when we left, and despite being cloudy the whole way, it didn't start raining until we got closer to Northern New Jersey.  We stopped at the IKEA in Paramus since I hadn't been to one in so long (darn you, Canadian border closure).  We walked through the whole store, but it turns out I didn't really need anything.  The snack bar seemed to be quite stripped down due to COVID, too.  Bummer.  But the boys did have fun in one section posing the drawing models to look like they were fighting...

Our next stop was going to be the Woodbury outlets, which were only about a half hour from our hotel.  It's a huge outlet mall, but alas, it wasn't the best day to be at an outdoor outlet.  It was only drizzling when we arrived, but the cloud cover throughout the Catskills was impressive.

There should be rolling green hills above those buildings, but the clouds just covered them completely.

We grabbed lunch in the food court, where Jacob discovered Jersey Mike's gluten-free sub was very comparable to Firehouse's.  We hit up Adidas, Under Armour, and Nike.  Then we decided to check the Vans outlet to see if there was anything Jacob liked better than the basic black Vans he's been wearing for school the past two years.  We had this year's waiting for us at Kohl's, but figured it was worth a try.  Well, by that point it had really started raining, and by the time we met up with Craig and Carter who waited in line at Nike, it was pouring like crazy.  Even with umbrellas we were soaked!  I guess the hurricane had arrived!

We drove to the hotel, and saw a few accidents along the way.  We also glimpsed Legoland, which was our target destination for the next day.  We unloaded as quickly as we could at the hotel (the cover over the entrance was little help), and tried to settle into our room and dry off.  My sneakers took a lot of time with the blow dryer to be usable again for the next day!  Jacob was begging to go bowling (still, after the Poor Richard's Pub thing, he wouldn't let it go), but it just kept raining, and we still had to figure out dinner.  Eventually all the bowling options were eliminated, and it became pretty clear going out wasn't the best idea anyway.  We eventually settled on a 110 Grill that was just five minutes away, ordered online, and Craig and Jacob went to pick it up.  While they were gone I tried to log on and finally order our Legoland tickets.  I hadn't bought them earlier because we were first waiting to see what the weather would do, and we were thrilled when the forecast eventually went from a rainy morning to a really nice looking day.  Well, when I went to order them earlier in the morning, the promo code I had to save $150 on the kids tickets wasn't working.  I figured I'd try to contact Valpak and Legoland and see if anyone got back to me.  Unfortunately, I accidentally left my phone on silent during the day, and missed Valpak's call.  Even more unfortunately, the call back number was cut off and I didn't get the message until after 6pm.  Upon further investigation, it appeared the promo code still worked for all other Legoland stuff, but they must have decided to shut it down for that location since it was new, and maybe with capacity issues they didn't need any additional incentives.  But when I went to order the tickets, they were SOLD OUT.  And not only was Thursday sold out, but so was Friday, so there wasn't even an opportunity to stay another night and go then.  I was devastated.  Just complete disbelief and shame that I had messed this up.  We came all the way there and couldn't do the thing we most wanted to do!  It was clearly not a great night after that.  I even pulled out the little mini bottle of wine I threw in the cooler to try to ease up my sadness, but the helplessness of it all really sucked.  Yet another frustrating moment in a trip full of them.

We spent the night watching coverage of the rains that were coming through.  Craig and Jacob saw a half-submerged car on their way to get dinner, and we weren't even in the worst of it.  Areas around New York City ended up with over nine inches of rain in a matter of a few hours and had massive flooding.  Other areas in PA and NJ had tornadoes.  The Schyulkill River in Philly overflowed, and I'm pretty sure the sunken highway we traveled on days earlier was completely underwater.  It was crazy to see all this damage so close by, and close to areas we'd just been through earlier that day and week.  Luckily for us, by the time we woke up the next morning, you'd never know our area had any issues.  It was cool but sunny.  But we felt terrible for all the other people who had been affected.  More than 40 are reported dead now, sadly.

Unfortunately, the Tru breakfast wasn't its usual awesomeness due to COVID.  There were enough options to get us through, but it was yet another little disappointment.  But not all was lost--the boys got in a foosball game in the very cool lobby before we left!

Since Legoland wasn't an option, we had to find something else to ease our disappointment.  We decided to hit up the New York State Fair in Syracuse.  It paled in comparison, but it was better than nothing.  And honestly, it was probably the one scenario where I could convince the boys to go without getting a lot of eye rolling and complaining.  I've been to the fair twice (that I know of).  We went once when I turned six.  I vaguely remember opening my birthday gifts early in the morning and then getting on the road right after.  We stayed at my great-aunt's (who I share a birthday with), and we went to the fair.  As I recall, we somehow won a stuffed frog, and I still have him packed away!  The next time was on the way back from dropping off my brother at college, although I can't remember if it was the first time (1992) or the last time (1995).  My memories of both trips are pretty vague, so I was eager to go back and see everything again, and Craig had never been.

That stretch from downstate to Syracuse was a haul.  It really did feel like it took forever.  We must be out of practice!  After getting back to the Syracuse area and stopping for lunch (again at Firehouse, plus Wendy's for Carter), we got to the fair parking and shuttled over to the entrance.  Carter was very interested in the shuttle and how it differed from a regular bus.

We headed in and tried to get our bearings amidst a maze of buildings.  We started in the aquarium and saw some turtles and fish.  

Long neck!

Then it was on to the Dairy Building, home of the famous butter sculpture!  This year's was about getting back to normal post-COVID.  Ha.  Even still, it's always incredible to see what they can do with butter!

School lunch

Playing games

Sports!

Another building had a variety of vendors, and the boys enjoyed their massages!

One building had a circus exhibit that had tons of miniatures reflecting circuses and carnivals.  There were tiny versions of favorite amusement park rides, as well as a giant circus tent at a scale of 3/4" = 1 foot.  It was quite the set of collections.

Some of the buildings were really gorgeous.  The Horticulture building in particular had gorgeous entrances.

Across the way was a pretty fountain.

Outside the building there were a few memorials, including this one from 9/11...

...and this more general one. 

We worked our way back around to the dairy building again (now that our stomachs were a bit emptier) to have our 25 cent milk.  The chocolate milk was tasty!

Then it was on to check out the animals.  Unfortunately, there wasn't as much as usual to see.  We did see a bunch of cows, but didn't stick around for too long because apparently it smelled (I wouldn't know).

The chickens were a bit better, but there weren't rabbits or other small mammals in the building that the signs indicated would be there.  But the variety of chickens was fascinating.

Could there be a more picture perfect rooster?

This one had quite the hairdo and a long neck!

This one had fuzzy feet and seemed like seeing might be an issue!

The colors!

Elsewhere on the property was a Native American village setup that included a model of a long house.

There was also a ceremonial pipe dedicated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  It could actually be smoked!  That thing has survived a long time now!

We also saw some goats.  I decided I like the ones with the floppy ears, but wished there would have been pygmy goats, which are the cutest ever.  Apparently a day or two later they did a goat costume contest.  But this building was also supposed to have llamas and sheep, and they were nowhere to be found.  I read something in some Facebook comments that indicated that overlap with the Erie County Fair (and, I imagine, the longer fair duration this year) maybe have contributed to some changes in schedules for who was there when.  I guess early in the fair there were no cows, but there were a ton when we were there, so perhaps everyone's schedules were a bit different and maybe they couldn't spend 3+ weeks sitting at fairs.

The last building we visited was the new Exposition Center.  It was huge and really nice!  Inside were a bunch of military vehicles and this amazing sand sculpture.  It meant a little more after spending hours building with sand a few days earlier.

The theme was thanking essential workers

I love the guys in the center who were trying to eradicate the cross-eyed coronavirus with a syringe.

As we made our way to the midway (with a detour to drool over some of the amazing campers they had set up--seriously, nicer than our house!), we saw what appeared to be the finale of a high dive show.  You can just see the woman beginning her dive from the highest perch.  It was really high, but fear not, she popped back up just fine!
  

While we were looking at campers, Carter found a four leaf clover!  Where was that luck the rest of the trip?

The boys had been begging to go to the midway all day--Carter for rides and Jacob to find a basketball game.  We walked through to get our bearings and figure out what we were going to pay to do.  Jacob did do a game and predictably failed--and wow, the oval shape of a hoop on another game was shocking even though we know they're all rigged.

After already spending significant money for Carter and me to ride three rides each a couple days before (I don't regret it one bit but it's not something I was looking to make a habit), I was hesitant to shell out a bunch for these rides, and admittedly, they weren't cheap.  I didn't like the card setup they had, or the way you had to select credits, and it just didn't feel worth it to me in the end.  Well, as we were walking back out of the kiosk line, a woman and her son approached us and she said, "Do want to ride some rides?  I think there's about 37 credits left on this card and he doesn't want to ride anything."  Maybe that lucky four leaf clover brushed off on us!  She just gave us the card and that was it!  What a sweet woman, and at the perfect moment when we had resigned ourselves to not riding.

Our first priority was the Cyclone, which was a version of the ride I had tried to describe to Carter when we went to Darien Lake as one of my favorites that's no longer there.  Darien's was called the UFO, and it was a little more substantial than this version.  Darien's had full on cages with vertical bars, rather than just a chain across your spot, and when the ride spun and eventually lifted, my brother always tried to hold himself up on the bars as long as he could until the G-forces pushed him back against the wall.  I thought it would be a next step up for Carter since he liked Alien Invasion in Ocean City, since it's a similar concept, but with the added tilt.  He did enjoy it, and we were giggling about not being able to move body parts and being so high up on the one side.  The spinning was a bit more than I'd have preferred (I forgot to take a Dramamine), but I came through pretty good all things considered. 

Next up was the Super Cyclone (no relation), which was the only decent-sized roller coaster.  I can't say I was excited to go on this one because these are usually a bit rough and rickety, but Carter really wanted to.  The cars were a bit more substantial than most, but the restraints weren't my favorite (they just didn't ratchet down to where I'd have liked, so I held it down further the entire ride for Carter), and aside from a couple drops it wasn't too exciting of a ride, but it was fine.
 

I really wanted to ride a ferris wheel or the sky ride (below) to get a better view of the midway, but Carter didn't like the sound of the ferris wheel, and the sky ride was a separate $5 ticket.  Had we had more time and energy by the end of the night, I might have done it anyway given our free rides.  Maybe next time.  But it was photogenic with the Exposition Center in the background.

The next ride, the Cliff Hanger, was similar in concept to that crazy one we saw in Ocean City that looked like the Paratrooper, except this one just looked like hang gliding without the control of the flaps.  We made a grave error on this one--which I blame on the ride operator--and didn't slide up quite far enough on the support canvas we had to lay on.  Upon further examination, there was actually a chin rest and I think we should have been up on that because supporting our heads and necks through the G-forces once it got going was really hard.  We both ended up with temporary sore necks.  I also did not like the amount of spinning on this one--it was worse than anything else and I definitely needed a Tylenol afterward for a headache.  I'll know better for next time, I guess.

After that we took a detour to meet back up with Craig and Jacob, who went to get food, and got food ourselves.  We still had enough credits for one more ride, but nothing else was jumping out so we ended up doing a fun house.  It was pretty quick and not super exciting, but Carter still seemed to like it.

And with that, we had conquered the fair!  As we made our way out we attempted to get more food, but the fun fair food I wanted involving a donut stuffed with ice cream had run out.  We did get to hear a couple minutes of the current iteration of the band Starship performing "We Built This City", which was sort of a fun, unexpected moment.  We headed out to catch the shuttle back to the van, and that was about it.

Luckily my driving shift home went relatively quickly and it was a huge relief to get home at 10pm.  We were able to do the majority of the unpacking that night, which gave us Friday through Monday to settle back in at home.  We all slept in pretty late on Friday, though I'm not sure if that was general vacation tiredness or an indication of how crappy we all slept in the hotels.  

Unfortunately, our efforts to get Jacob his second COVID shot on Friday were thwarted.  He was due that day but we didn't make an appointment because we weren't sure if we were going to be home.  The office had indicated it likely would be fine to call in if we got back early, but apparently there were no spots available.  Unfortunately, any other day would involve potentially missing school or sports, so he's now scheduled for Thursday and we're hoping he'll feel good enough to make school Friday (but at least he'll get his first two days in normally, and I can't imagine Friday will be too labor intensive) and should be back to normal by the time of his first basketball game with his new team Saturday.

My favorite part of Friday was eating my birthday cake in a jar!  It was delicious and very rich! 

Craig got his COVID test on Saturday and it quickly came back negative, thank goodness, which was one less thing to worry about heading into the first week of school.  Other than a quick trip to Buffalo for Craig's dad's birthday, we had a generally low-key weekend--some shopping, school supply prep, yard work catch up, and sleep!  It's all about to get real, though.  But that's a whole other post.  That and my post-vacation ponderings coming soon...