Cedar Point

Today, August 8, 2010 is Lee and I's first anniversary.  We knew it was a big deal, but we couldn't decide what we wanted to do.  Nothing was going on in town and we didn't want to do the typical date night.  So we decided to go to Cedar Point for our anniversary weekend.  Lee couldn't take any more time off of work and we lead the college group on Sunday nights, so we had to get it all in between work on Friday and the group meeting Sunday night.


Once we decided we wanted to go to Cedar Point for our anniversary (a week before our anniversary), we started the planning.  Well, Lee started the planning.  It's nice having a husband who will plan the vacations.  Lee picked out a few cities for us to stay in Friday night.  Sandusky is eight and a half hours from our apartment, so we wanted something a little closer.  We picked Findlay, Ohio which is only seven hours away.  I researched Cedar Point and found out you can't buy discounted tickets online anymore, and Lee researched the places you can get discounted tickets.  They were of course located in Ohio, so we couldn't pre-purchase them.  Lee also found a few places for us to stay Saturday night after the park.  Because Hotwire worked so well for us in Savannah, we used it again for this trip.  It listed a 4-star hotel for a cheap price for Saturday night in Columbus, so we chose that one.  We booked our hotels and Lee planned a few stops for Sunday on the way home.  We were ready to go!

We worked all day Friday before leaving for Cedar Point. As soon as I got home, I finished packing and straightening up the apartment. When Lee got home, he finished packing and we headed out the door. It was daunting that after a full day of work, we would be driving at least 7 hours to our hotel. The drive actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. We enjoyed each other’s company and listened to a few of Mark Driscoll’s sermons. Just as I was starting to fade, we arrived in Findlay, Ohio. We checked into our hotel at around 12:30am. I was anxious to see our accommodations because you never really know with Hotwire what you will get. We were pleasantly surprised when we found our room had a living room, kitchenette, and bedroom with double beds. The bathroom separated the bedroom and living room. We crashed for a few hours before starting day two.

We woke up bright and early Saturday to get ready for the park. We were still an hour and a half away and the park opened at 10am. We saw a Meijer’s on the way in the night before, so we stopped to pick up breakfast and coupons for our park tickets. They didn’t have coupons, but they did have actual tickets discounted. So with our discounted tickets, mini muffins, and chocolate milk in hand, we got on the road. We started feeling the traffic about 20 minutes from the park. Luckily, the park had parking down pat. They directed everyone into neat rows very quickly. I guess at $10 a car, you can afford to pay people to direct parking. We started with a simple ride to warm up.  The wait was only 15 minutes and the ride was wonderful.  It was a lot more fun than it looked when it took you up high and spun you as you fell.  We were right next to the Ferris wheel when we got off the first ride, so we figured we would ride that while the line was short so we could get pictures from the top.  That was a big mistake.  While the line was short, it took forever to get on it because they weren't using all the available spots.  The Ferris wheel took an hour of our short day away, but we did get some good pics of the park.  The rest of the park was pretty thrilling.  We waited for 15 minutes to 2 hours for the rides, but they were all worth the wait.  This theme park definitely takes the cake.  Most theme parks have 2 or 3 big rides along with several small rides.  This park has several large rides along with several smaller rides.  I love this theme park!

On day three of our trip, we stopped at a few more places.  Our first stop was at the old Ohio State Reformatory.  It was the place where The Shawshank Redemption was filmed.  It looked beautiful on the outside. It was shocking how bad it is on the inside.  Also, because Lee is a college football fan, we visited the Ohio State campus.  We checked out the stadium.  It was impressive, but not quite as impressive as UT's stadium.  Also, their campus was really tacky with shiny, metallic colors all over everything.  It was strange.

Lastly, we went to the top of Carew Tower to see the city of Cincinnati.  It was very hot at the top, but it was 48 stories high so the view was amazing.  For a weekend trip, it was quite an awesome trip. We fit lots of activities in, and only paid for a few.  What an awesome way to celebrate our first anniversary!

Jack Daniels Tour

Lee and I got together with some of our friends a couple months ago to take the tour of the Jack Daniels distillery.  We met in the small town of Lynchburg and grabbed some lunch at one of the few options.  We ate at a small local place.  If you try something like that, be prepared to have cash on hand.  We had to make a visit to the ATM.

After lunch, we went to the distillery for the tour.  As soon as you get out of the car, you are smacked in the face with the smell of sour mash.  The tour is free, so that was really great.  We waited for our tour to start, looked around at the different items in the lobby area, and signed the guestbook.  When our group was called, we all gathered in a room to watch a video about Jack Daniels.  When the movie was finished, we left the room and loaded a small tour bus.

Our tour guide was a big ole country boy.  He was thoroughly entertaining as a tour guide.  We went all through the distillery learning about how everything is made.  You even get to smell the sour mash.  Don't take a huge whiff of that! The smell floating around the entire property gave me a headache.  Other liked the smell.

The tour was lots of fun.  It's always interesting to see how huge facilities like that run.  It was a good day trip and it was cheap.  And of course, no trip with our friends Philip and Abby is complete without visiting a nearby firetower!

Atlanta - Aquarium and World of Coke

My two best friends from college and I decided to get together to catch up.  Because we are located all over the state, we decided to go to Atlanta together instead of picking a city in Tennessee to hang out.  We decided that the Aquarium and the World of Coke would be the most fun when we found a coupon on the Aquarium's website.

The Aquarium was not as cool as I had hoped.  It was not really a great aquarium.  Their claim to fame is their whale sharks.  The whale sharks were awesome, I will not even lie.  Also their manna rays were amazing.  Other than those two things, the aquarium was unimpressive.

The World of Coke, however, was quite impressive. We did have to wait almost an hour to get in the building, and the heat was terrible.  It was great once we got in. There were several large coke bottles decorated from different countries.  Also, there was memorabilia from all years Coke has been in existence.

You can view several videos about the company and also can walk through the actual bottling process.  At the end of the tour, you can try all the different types of Coke from all over the world - 60 flavors.  I would say that 80% from other countries were disgusting.  Coke definitely knows the American market because all of them were good to me.  Tasting all the flavors is fun, but it will definitely give you a stomach ache if you try it on an empty stomach.  Lastly, you receive a free bottle of Coke that was bottled right there.  It's a pretty neat tour and I recommend it.  The best part of the trip though was hanging out with my friends!  I hope it's not another year before we hang out again!

Cave City

One day Lee felt like eating somewhere new.  He suggested going to Bowling Green, Kentucky for lunch.  We had to watch the kids at church later that afternoon, so we postponed the trip until the following Saturday.  After a little bit of research, we found out that there was no reason to go to Bowling Green, so we chose to visit Mammoth Cave instead.
We headed out around noon (after sleeping in of course) and started the hour and a half drive. We had an exhilarating game of the "alphabet game" on the way there and quickly got to Cave City.  We wanted to make sure we got tickets to the tour we wanted to take, so we went straight to the caves without stopping at all the small tourist shops.

When we arrived at the Visitor Center, it was packed.  It probably didn't help that we went on the 4th of July weekend.  We squeezed through to get the tickets to the tour we wanted that didn't start for 2 and a half more hours, but were sadly disappointed when we found out that tour had been sold out for two weeks.  We chose a similar one, but it didn't go by the river and it didn't start for 3 more hours.  So we left slightly disappointed and decided to hit up the local gift shops.

We started at a place that sold rock figurines.  It was pretty horrible.  I'm pretty sure everything that was in there had been in there for 25 years.  All paper products were yellowed.  Lee did find several figurines from his parent's house.  He never knew where they came from until then.  After not finding anything to buy, we went down the road and tried a few more stores.  It was amazing all the junk these stores had!  There was so much rusted, metal junk, it was amazing.  You know nothing had been bought from these stores in years.

After exploring that road a bit, we went back to the cave.  We found a parking spot and waited for our group.  I believe there were a little over 100 in our tour group.  We started down the hill and into the cave.  It was hot waiting for our tour to leave, but it definitely cooled off going into the cave.  You could feel the cool air rushing towards you as you headed down the stairs.

The cave was very family-friendly. The paths were paved, there were handrails in locations that needed them, and the cave was massive.  While this tour was not for the adventurous type, it was still enjoyable to walk around and see.  While the cave had plenty of spots where rocks were small enough to climb and sit on, don't be fooled into thinking you are allowed to do so.  They will absolutely threaten to call the authorities.

The tour ended with a tower of stairs to climb.  That might be the only difficult part of the tour.  They were also very steep, not like in these pictures.  For $12 a person, the tour was pretty nice. We stopped for dinner in Bowling Green and had some nice Thai food.  Overall, the trip was pretty fun for a day trip.  It was nice to get away!