Day 61 - A zero day - but SO much fun

 As the title suggests, Rover and Dover didn’t move at all today.  That’s because we spent the whole day at Calaway Park!  

Because we had electricity at the campsite, we gave ourselves a treat this morning - 

egg, cheese, and English muffins for breakfast on the griddle.  This may not sound like a treat, but it wasn’t our norm and it tasted delicious.  After breakfast we quickly got laundry started so we were ready to get into the park when it opened.  It turns out we were a little late and Amy got into the park minutes after it opened, but the rest of us were there for the countdown to open the park.


As we waited, we met a dear friend of mine Dale and his family Julie, Jaxson and Emma.  They live in Calgary and were one of the main reasons we visited the city so it was GREAT to be able to spend the day with them.  As it turns out, Jaxson had a similar personality to Sebastian so they spent their day largely together with highlights of riding riptide racers (kind of like a merry go round for jet skis) and did a mirror maze that included water mist at points.  Robinson and Emma were both more on the daredevil side so they too paired up and roamed the park together riding more of the intense rides like the drops and Vortex roller coaster.  Both the boys had their watches on and so they just had to check in at the meet up times, but otherwise, they were free to see the park.  It worked out great.







Since the kids were occupied, it left Amy and I to visit with Dale and Julie.  We rode some of the rides together, but more importantly, I enjoyed being able to visit with Dale and his family. I'm so grateful they gave up their day to visit with us.  To be able to have some long overdue conversations with Dale was a treat and it was terrific to get to know Julie more as well.  The time flew by.


We all got together for lunch and bought a full pizza to share.  We all agreed that the pizza was way better than expected for amusement park food.  After lunch, there were more rides, but the kids also played a round of mini-golf.  Julie was extremely kind and let all the kids play some of the carnival games.  Because many of the games were ones you can’t lose with, the boys suddenly had handfuls of stuffies to bring home.  

Eventually we glanced back at our watches to find that they were beginning to shut down the rides for closing time.  It was hard to believe that it was already that time!  


I want to insert a quick review of Calaway Park here.  It’s unlike nearly any other amusement park I can remember - it’s family oriented and everything was designed accordingly.  There were rides for everybody’s risk level, the carnival games gave prizes to everybody, and it just generally had a family feel to it.  Perhaps it was because we were there on a weekday, but the lines for the rides were very tolerable - even for the most popular rides.


After leaving the park, the boys wanted to show off the camper so Dale and his family stopped by briefly.  However, Emma had another event that evening so we said our farewells and they headed home.  Our day wrapped up shortly thereafter with dinner, a bit of shows (started to watch Strange World), books, and then bed.  


There were other memorable days on the trip, but this is certainly one we won’t forget.  Thanks to Dale and his family as well as Calaway Park for enabling such a great day.




Total miles - 9,299

# States/Provinces - 16 / 2


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