Zippity Doo Dah-- Saturday, July 30, 2011

After breakfast we first visited Top Secret, one of the local attractions. Although we had all read some negative reviews of the site, Blake thought it was intriguing, so off we went. The coolest thing about this place is the exterior; it's a large replica of the White House, upside-down!! Inside they have it decorated with all the furniture, etc. on the ceiling so that you feel like you are walking on the ceiling. OK, that's about the extent of what was interesting here; although, as Blake put it, "our guide seemed real nice."
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Blake enjoyed the tour around the site. Chris and Kathy thought it had potential if they just plain hyped it as a "haunted [White] house" attraction. Several times the guide let the visitors walk down very dark tunnels on their own, sometimes with surprises along the way. They could also make use of the basic premise and make more of the fact that something has happened to the White House and we have to gather clues; or we time travel in to the future and find the White House in this condition and discover all these anomalies on the premises, etc. Oh, well, what's a trip to a tourist town without something like this?

Our big planned activity took place during the afternoon. After a lunch at perhaps the largest (and noisiest) McDonald's we've ever seen, we headed over to Bigfoot Zipline Tours. Kathy didn't take part in this activity because the doctor recommended she not do it because of the osteoporosis in her spine. Afterwards, Chris agreed this was probably a good call, after all!

The zipline course has 6 ziplines. You start by climbing 4 to 6 flights of steps to the top of a tower. The zipline course ranged from 462 feet to 1,397 feet. The last and longest course was a race between Blake and myself. Blake was given a headstart and won the race.

Our zipline guides were Gilligan and Jordan. Since Jordan caught us at the other end, he would go first showing us the trick they encouraged us to try. Gilligan would stay behind and attach each of us to the zipline and send us on our way. Our equipment consisted of a harness, helmet and leather gloves with thick leather attached to the palm. We were supposed to hold on to the harness with our left hand and use the glove on our right hand to lightly hold the zipline for control and breaking. Chris tried all the tricks, but had difficulty using the glove to guide and brake because it is too fat and weak. Nevertheless, it is fun.

One of the nice things is that the Bigfoot people let Kathy go out on one of the buses about two hours after the guys left. She was delivered to the final tower and got to go up and see Chris and Blake come zipping toward her on the only double zipline of the course. So at least she got to see what they looked like!

We purchased one of the photos of Blake ziplining and one of their entire group.

Next stop on the vacation agenda was a tour of the Upper Dells on a jet boat! We took the tour with Captain Ron's Original Dells Jet Boats. This is one form of Dells tour that both Kathy and Chris and never done before, so it was another new experience for all three of us! Although the tour itself is much like some of the slower boat tours of the upper Dells, it's the speed that makes it different! And to spice things up, Captain Ron would "put on the brakes" and that would splash many of the passengers. If you want to get really wet on the tour, sit in the first couple of rows in the boat. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) we were running late getting there and the three of us ended up sitting in the back of the boat. We still were splashed, but not much.

For supper, we decided to go eat Japanese food at Ginza of Tokyo. We enjoyed watching our food be prepared at the table, and Chris also ordered some sushi. There were two other parties at our table; both from Wisconsin. That made 7 adults and three kids; it was fun watching the kids experiment and try to use chopsticks. Well, actually, Chris was teaching the other adults how to use them too!

Such a busy day... we ended it by going to the nearby drive-in theater, Big Sky Drive-In. Yes, Wisconsin Dells still has a working outdoor theater. Not only do they have a drive-in, but there are two different screens! Annndddd.. each screen shows a double feature of first-run movies for the same price! Blake chose to go to Captain America. We enjoyed it, but Blake was really wiped out after the movie, so we didn't stay for the second feature, the third Transformers movie.

One bit of excitement "hit" when we were entering the theater lot. After paying at the booth, we began driving in and heard a crash. We had no idea what it was! Chris got out and looked and couldn't see anything at the beginning. He finally found the pieces of our lid for our vent on the camper. Come to find out, there was a bar across the entrance and it must have been just a fraction too low for our van!

But wait, there's more! When we got back to the campground it was very dark (after midnight, etc.). Kathy was trying to be quiet in the campground and Chris couldn't hear her directions, plus couldn't see much behind him in the dark. Long story short, he scraped a tree while he backed! This may not have done much more than scrape a little paint, but we had been lazy (and hot!) and had left the louvered windows in the back open. We ended up losing the bottom louver off the back passenger side... Bad words were spoken, testy words were exchanged, life went on...