Day 3

After wandering out on the deck and watching the sunrise again, we had breakfast and planned for our day at Silver Dollar City.  We couldn't get moving very well, so Gertrude started to wake us up with a little dance in front of the tube.

Silver Dollar City is a hillbilly theme park.  I hadn't been there in at least 22 years and, it really hasn't changed.  The train is still robbed.  There are amazing smells and tastes every where you go.  The funnel cakes taste fantastic and the workers are friendly as can be.  Oh, and the other revelers are weird.  Even the kid who was hitting on Gertrude.

Matilda joined a contest to become the Grand Marshal for the morning parade.  First she competed in a hula hoop chain contest, at which she excelled amazingly.  She was out of that hula hoop before the kid next to her was even aware that the contest had started.  Her team won hands down.  The next round was dedicated to carrying a ping pong ball in a spoon and dropping it into a bucket.  Matilda's team started off strongly, but the kid in front of her clearly didn't understand the concept of the game.  I was yelling at Matilda to slap her down, get her out of the game, but my wife nudged me in the ribs, saying that I wasn't being nice.

Well, Matilda's team was behind when it came to her.  And she took off like a rocket.  Didn't drop the ball, nailed it in the bucket and was back in line in a blur.  The other kids tried to make up the gap, but they couldn't and they lost.  We kept an eye out for that stupid girl for the rest of the day, but we never saw her.  Lucky for her, because if we did . . . she would have been sorry.

To help soothe our pain we ate funnel cakes.  Yum.  Mmm.  Fried stuff.

On our way to lunch Gertrude spotted a kiddie ride, of sorts.  The ride vehicle was shaped like a balloon.  The cars lifted up into the air, spun around and tilted you through the air with the greatest of ease.  Matilda, who is not a big fan of rides, clutched my arm as we rode.  Gertrude, however, who barely fit the safety requirements to ride, grinned from ear to ear with excitement.  She would demand to ride this thing several more times during the day.  We hopped a quick ride on the merry-go-round and headed off to lunch.

After strapping on the feed bag, we played at the Art Barn where the girls colored for a while (that fat guy got in the way of Matilda again).  Yeah, okay, I colored too.  It was soothing.  If you look at the picture of Matilda and me coloring you'll see the scary lady who accosted us while we colored.  She told us how much she loved coloring because of the "juicy markers".  Matilda responded with, "Um, yeah, okay.  I think I prefer the colored pencils.  They're drier."  (Note: the fat guy taking a picture while Gertrude played in the sand is not me.  Just some other random fat guy.)

The sky was darkening and it looked like we were going to have a typical Midwestern afternoon shower.  We decided to go to the kiddie section of the park that, essentially, is like an aggressive water park.  Rather than riding slides and jumping into pools, kids shoot water at you and unexpected fountains squirt you without permission.  If Mother Nature was going to get us wet, we figured we'd go with the flow.

The girls found the fountains and jumped and played in them for quite some time.  Matilda skipped and jumped from one spout to the next, like a flittering pixie. 

Gertrude, however, after discovering how the fountains worked, would stick her face over the spout and wait until it shot her in the face (dig the glittery, purple shoes on her).

This is how she looked afterwards:

Wet, tired and hungry we decided to wander around and do some shopping.  Gertrude fell sound asleep and keeled over in her stroller like a street bum after sucking down a whole can of Sterno. 

When she awoke we were in the area of the balloons again.  So, we rode them again.  And then, she spotted it.  The kiddie roller coaster.

Surely she was too young to ride.  She's not even three yet.  She's just a baby.

Wrong 'em Boyo.   She and mom hopped on and within a second, the kid was addicted.  She squealed around the tracks, up and down each hill.  When she got off the ride, she had a grin plastered from ear to ear.  We had to let her ride it again to quell her need for speed.

For the rest of the day she would demand that we ride every roller coaster.  She'd cry when we'd explain that, despite her lack of fear, she wasn't allowed to ride the double helix inverted coaster.  It was just against safety regulations.

We headed back to the "cabinet" and roasted some weenies.  Realizing that we had to go home the next day, we decided to hit the strip and do stuff.  We found a go kart track with a Peace Frogs store (bought a cool monkey shirt and discussed the finer points of non-country music with the stoned hippie kid working the counter).  Gertrude again begged to ride the go karts, but she was too small.   She cried, but was sated with a ride on the bumper boats.  I drove, she squirted.

At first it was fun.  It was us versus Matilda.  But then, somehow, Matilda got every other person on the boats to gang up on us.  We were being attacked on all sides.  Gertrude, bless her heart, shot every one of those strangers with the boat's squirt gun, but to no avail.  They just kept coming.  Even the kindly looking grandmother turned evil and stalked us like a pirate on open water.

Then we went for milkshakes at another diner.  While we sipped our confections, Gertrude danced in front of the juke box, much to the chagrin of the entire clientele.  I put a few choice songs on the box (Motown, Buddy Holly, Beach Boys) for her as she roamed around trying to get other kids to join her in her reverie.  But, alas, no one else was quite ready for a night on the town like Gertrude.

When we got back to the cabinet it was late.  Matilda was asleep before her head hit the pillow.  Gertrude vibrated for a few hours before she fell asleep half way between her bed and the floor.

Day Four