The heart is a very fickle thing. Sometimes it wants one thing and then sometimes it wants something completely different. Put differently-- I sometimes want milk chocolate, while other times I want white chocolate. Strange. No rhyme or reason as to why my heart has these feelings, yet the heart knows what it wants in the end. Life sometimes presents difficult choices that fracture the heart. The more you struggle to try and put your heart back together the stronger the friction becomes. If the friction is not controlled, it can turn into a fire. A heart on fire burns slowly, blackens, and ruins without intervention. So, with this trip, the goal was to douse a heart on fire with an epic amount of water. An epic amount that could only be found at a waterpark.
After a quick flight from San Diego, we met up with Wendy (aka Love Cousin). She was all prepared with an entire bag full of kolaches, Dr. Pepper cake, and other scrumptious desserts from our favorite Czech bakery. Delicious! You can’t find good kolaches outside of Texas. I chowed down on 2+ sausage and cheese kolaches right then and there. The airport was a bit sketchy at night and we were extremely grateful for Wendy deciding to pick us up. Before the trip, we were discussing what we might do, and it was decided that the tradition of Schlitterbahn must be kept alive and was a must-do for this trip!
Fast-forward through a long, painful, deeply emotional, thought-provoking, challenging, and often-hilarious drive and we find ourselves at Casino El Camino Bar & Grill. The restaurant was on the famous 6th street in Austin. The streets were littered with cops, cops, and acne/baby-faced children running around the realization of our age set in. With the addition of Lara, we pigged out on a great burger, fries, and some quite tasty fried mac and cheese.
Grant was able to find us a room at an old Omni (now called Austin South Park Hotel) and we loved it. We entered and the front desk attendant offered us complementary water bottles. The attendant was happy to accommodate our request for adjoining rooms and so everyone was able to run back and forth between the rooms. Since Schlitterbahn was happening we had to kick off our tradition of watching It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s “The Gang Goes to the Waterpark” episode. Frank having the “vagina aids” to get front of the line is vile, yet hilarious at the same time. The episode ended and so did our long first night together.
The next morning, we got up and chowed down on more of those kolaches. My heart was fuller every time I ate one. I could only imagine the fat, cholesterols, and other yummy substances building up in the walls of my heart arteries. I am on vacation so who cares! I could see the pool from the room and it looked inviting against the backdrop of the Texas heat. After a bit of persuasion, everyone was down to go swimming. It was magical. The pool was used for a scene in Mrs. Congeniality. Only Grant would know this random fact. Grant hearts this stuff and could give you a movie tour of Austin/San Antonio in his sleep. We had the entire pool, hot tub, and sauna to ourselves. There was also a bevy of unaccounted-for towels that may have found their way into the kolache bag for Schlitterbahn. The hotel that just kept on giving!
After drying off in the sauna, we packed our remaining belongings and hit the road for Canyon Lake. I had never heard of Canyon Lake, but it’s a charming town on the outskirts of San Antonio near New Braunfels. Along the way, we stopped at HEB Plus to get suntan lotion and snacks. HEB Plus is amazing and had so many random flavors of suntan lotion— banana, mango, pomegranate, birthday cake, coconut, etc. When did suntan lotion become something that is flavored? Afterward, we stopped at the one and only Buc-ees. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the New Braunfels Buc-ee’s location is considered the largest convince store in the world! Although a new Buc-ee’s location in Tennessee may be taking that title over shortly. This place was huge! We got beaver nuggets, bbq, drinks, and desserts, and were even able to sample a white chocolate-covered chip they were debuting. I regret not raiding the cookie dough bar, but I guess that will give me something to look forward to next time. Lara had never been to Buc-ees and we thought we would not get her out! She teased about just living there and that she was moving in. Her heart was extremely full.
It wasn’t long after our pit stops that we made it to the hotel. I volunteered to get down with Grant and check us in. He may have mentioned that it was a timeshare, but I did not remember that at the time. As soon as I was in— I saw the signs. Overly friendly front desk attendants, a “guest services” center that would help you with your parking pass, and random activities for the day. Having sat through timeshare presentations before I knew this was not something that I personally wanted to do on this trip. My heart was just not able to deal. Sheila was very nice and even willing to give us $200 to meet her at 9 am, but we politely declined.
The room we were going to stay in was not finished so they gave us keys to the room, but not the actual unit number. Sheila told us we would be called in 20+ minutes with the actual number. This did not work for us. We put on our detective hats and went to work. We knew that we were in Building 11. Building 11 had 4 rooms and one was going through renovations with furniture on the patio. This left us only three rooms to try out. In the first room, nothing. Second room— click! Found it. There was a nice man that was doing inventory that we rushed out and the room was ours.
Wendy instantly crashed. We had been go-go-go for a long while now and I think all of us were jealous she was able to take a power nap. Everyone changed clothes and we proceeded to wander down to the pool area. There were multiple pools on site, but we went to the main one. Here we found a volleyball, a net, and no one there. Wendy and Luke versus Grant and Lara. Wendy and Luke “won,” but the points just did not reflect that in the end. The random screams of joy, excitement, and laughter that spewed from the pool must have scared anyone within a five-mile radius away.
As I was in the shower, I came down the stairs to find Grant’s parents had shown up. We chatted with them, talked with all of the brothers, got into the Dr. Pepper Cake, and then went to dinner. The first attempt was a reject Olive Garden restaurant called Italian Garden, but they had a 40+ minute wait. On top of the restaurant was a billboard that read—Baja Grill and Bar to the right and we decided to give that a try. We walked right in, got seated, and had some delicious Queso and BBQ. It was getting late, and our waiter had disappeared. Eventually, I found someone who worked there and after a small snafu with the cash—we got out of there unscathed.
The rush to get out was not to go to bed, but rather to go and do our only “camp” activity of the trip—smores. The hotel provided everything we need, and we nibbled around the graham cracker. In theory, smores sounded delicious. But, after everything that we had done in the last 24 hours and the food we had just eaten – we had plenty of leftovers. The evening would not have been complete without a “waterpark” themed show or movie. Insert: South Park’s episode of Pee courtesy of Wendy and Dylan.
If we thought “Aids” was bad, the Eric Cartman song “Minorities at My Waterpark” took it to a whole new level. The song which was featured quite frequently in the episode had quite a few racist lines such as: “There are too many minorities (minorities) at my water park (my water park)” and “There’s no place for me to sit anymore, And the lines just keep getting crazier. There are Mexicans all around me. The lazy river has never been lazier.” The problem was that the melody was quite lyric and for the rest of the trip all of us would randomly break into song singing in Cartman’s voice “…at my waterpark.” Thanks for introducing that into our lives Wendy! We attempted to start Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, but didn’t get very far before calling it a night.
The next morning was Schlitterbahn! Everyone was up and ready to go by 10 am. The first stop before the park was Taco Cabana. This restaurant has been hit hard as they are no longer offering in-person dining and had to go through the drive-thru. We got the tacos, were able to park right next to the park entrance, ate the tacos, and we were there right as they opened their doors. Unlike last year with Erica and Ashley, I made sure to get a photo to memorialize our trip right away. From there we grabbed our “Blast Pass” watches. This year they allowed us to combine all the watches into one, so I was the gatekeeper of the Blast Pass. What was even better was that each pass purchased was charged a $20 security deposit for the watch, so we all were able to get some money back!
Our hearts were disappointed when we found out two rides were closed – Cliffhanger and The Falls (the longest water ride in the World). We didn’t let that damper our spirits as we started with Hillside Tube Chute, then moved to Raging River, Congo, and White Water. The White-Water Tube Chute was a sunglass killer knocking both Lara and Wendy’s off. If this ever happens again—go back at different times of the day to the end of the ride as they have a sunglass collection stand instead of turning it into lost and found.
After knocking out most of the fun rides at the first park, we went to the second park to ride Dragon’s Revenge. The water ride seemed a bit off as the water that normally flows was turned off. Our suspicion proved correct—the ride was down as they could not blast people from the start. With the reputation of Schlitterbahn having had a kid decapitated in a similar ride; we passed. To make it up to us, Schlitterbahn did provide us a “Boarding” pass which permitted us to skip the line on any ride, so we choose Wolf Pack. Following that we hit the Torrent River and finished up with Master Blaster. As Grant and I were coming back around we noticed a line had formed where The Falls usually lines up. Turns out—3 hours before the park closed that they were going to open it! Our hearts were full again!
We all grabbed tubes and waited patiently in line until the ride opened. Grant’s favorite ride was a go and the random Aquaveyer did not disappoint. As we had maxed out on all of the rides where we were we decided to return to where we began. After a quick dip-n-dot break, Wendy and I kept our tradition of riding one ride again alive by choosing Raging Waters. And as tradition has it—we left with a story to tell. This year, a seriously drunk father decided to bring a cup and splash his child throughout the ride. When a lifeguard saw this, he asked the father to stop, and the man splashed the lifeguard in the face. The man quickly apologized, but the damage was already done. The lifeguard was stoic and refused to acknowledge the man who was apologizing. The ride ended with the man falling out of his tube and swaying back and forth as he scurried away.
Wendy and I met up with the other two and hit the road to Los Cuccos. Our traditional after Schlitterbahn meal where the green salsa cannot be beaten! The food took forever, but it was a lot better than it has been in recent years. Or…I was starving, but either way—win for that restaurant. We went back to the condo and tried unsuccessfully to get through Barb and Star again. This time, I called it and went to bed.
The next morning was checkout. We cleaned up, drove around for a bit, went to Buc’ees again, ended up at the Museum of the Weird, before hitting the road for the airport. Museum of the Weird is a one-and-done type of museum. I would not recommend going back there as it's kind of junky. A few fun things to read, but it could use a few new exhibits. We arrived at the airport early, the plane was miraculously on time, and we took off back to San Diego. This was Ludo’s first trip with us away and he did great! He was a tad excited to see us when we got back! My heart is in San Diego and will always be!
I know I will be teased about this trip for years to come. Also, next year, I need to buy one of these just because.