Alberta - Day 4

Today was our day at Calaway Park.  The kids are all very tired and slept in until 9:00am this morning, but that actually didn't hurt because the park is only a 10 minute drive from Amanda's house and it doesn't open until 10:00am.  We were still a bit late arriving, but not enough to cause us to miss anything that the kids wanted to do.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a good handle on what rides my kids actually liked.  After the little kids did the bumper cars, our host's eldest daughter took the older kids on a rather large and scary ride that involved spinning and flipping.  Neither Alex nor Evan liked it and I spent the rest of the morning just convincing them to get on any other ride to try and find something they liked.  Eventually they found some less intense rides and the bumper cars, which made them feel happier.

We had a quick lunch and then went on the big rides.  We all went on the log ride.  Evan and the two eldest girls went in one log, I took my other three kids in a second, while Amanda, Sandra and the last two girls went in the final log.  It was a nice ride, but Bradley decided he did not like it.  After the first drop, he was done, so I had to hold him close so that he wasn't too scared for the last part of the ride.

After the log ride, I took Alex and the two eldest girls on the roller coaster.  The girls have been on it before, but this was Alex's first time.  He wasn't 100% convinced he wanted to go on it, but he really wanted to try it, which we did.  It's a fairly short coaster (so they run you through it twice) and everyone had fun, even me, which is fairly amazing.

After that, it was just rides, rides and some more rides.  The park wasn't super busy, so the lines were reasonably short.  The highlights really were the bumper cars.  Alex, Evan and I went a couple of times on the adult bumper cars and had a blast chasing each other around the track.  They even drug Sandra out with them late in the day so that they could run Mom off the road.  I also had fun on the self-driving cars with Bradley.  He sat in the front and "drove" me around the track, studiously turning the steering wheel in the correct direction at every curve and corner.

A couple of late afternoon lightning storms shut down large parts of the park, which meant that we had to run through the bumper cars quite a bit, but that didn't sadden anyone.  At the very end of the day, we went on the carousel and then headed back for supper and bed.