Road Trip to Southern Indiana!

So here's the deal.

If you're not from Indiana, you might not know about Holiday World. It's an amusement park and water park just north of the Kentucky line. Here's a list of reasons {taken from their website} why you might want to visit it...and some help in understanding my thoughts toward a trip to this fine destination.

1. Two parks – Holiday World Theme Park and Splashin’ Safari Water Park – in one. I'm scared of all rides, so this is like double the fear.
2. TIME magazine named The Voyage the #1 Wooden Roller Coaster in America. Roller coasters make me sick and zooming over wood...well...refer to point number one.
3. Free soft drinks. Just sayin’ …You have my attention.
4. In 2013, USA Today proclaimed Splashin’ Safari to be the Best Water Park in the USA. Well if I'm going to go, I do want it to be the best.
5. The friendliest bunch of employees you’ll ever find – that’s why they’re called Hosts & Hostesses. Okay, I like that. Hope it's still true after they meet me.
6. Holiday World is the world’s first theme park (we opened, as Santa Claus Land, in 1946 – that’s nine years before Mr. Disney got started!). Impressive.
7. Voted the Cleanest Park in the World for more than a decade. We’re a bit fanatical. No wonder Ryan likes it so much! And clean is good.
8. Fun shows – with singing, dancing, and diving. But not at the same time … This sounds good.
9. Free parking. As does this.
10. Yummy food, from pizza and burgers to Thanksgiving Dinner. Reasonably-priced, too! I'll take the pizza and burgers. Not really a fan of Thanksgiving food.
11. Mammoth and Wildebeest – the two longest water coasters on the planet. Pray for me now.
12. Santa Claus. Every day. Now this, I like.
13. Free inner tube usage. Free Wi-Fi, too. Can I use the Wi-Fi in the inner tube??
14. Special menus for those with food allergies. Not me, but that's a nice thing to offer.
15. New for 2014: Mayflower swinging ship ride plus Friday Night Fireworks! I like fireworks but I'm not going on Friday. Sadness.
16. We’ve received nearly a thousand positive TripAdvisor.com reviews. I hope to be 1001.
17. Free sunscreen. (You know you always leave yours at home on the kitchen counter!) Impresive.
18. Holidog hugs. Kitty Claws, too. We left Braeya at home.
19. We’re in Santa Claus, Indiana. We’ve got that whole Mayberry vibe going on here. You’ll feel safe and happy in a sweet, old-fashioned way. I do like Mayberry.
20. Your family deserves it! So my husband says.

Ryan loves this place. LOVES IT. And as soon as we started dating, he started talking about visiting here. But the year we dated, we elected not to come because it would have meant spending the night away from home and that's just a whole can of worms I didn't want to mess with when we weren't married. And then last year we were up to our necks in home renovations, and we never had time to come. So that meant...this was our year.

Gulp.

And so it was that last Thursday, I packed these:

And this one got mad:

And when the husband got home, we did our pre-vacation photo:

And we hopped in the old car to head to Holiday World. I was both grateful and nervous for this trip. Grateful because tomorrow is the great dental event of 2014, and it was a merciful blessing to have this soaking up the weekend before so I didn't think about THAT. Nervous because I really don't like rides and big crowds and things outside my comfort zone.

We ate dinner on the road {It's a four hour drive, so we were going to be getting in late as it was} and stopped for coffee, of course, on the way.

I can only guess that what happened next has to be blamed on the coffee creamer. It was the ONLY thing we didn't have the same that evening. Two hours into our four hour trip, my stomach went on STRIKE. I felt crazy sick. Hot and cold, shaking and anxious, heart racing, absolutely sick to my stomach. There we were, in the winding hills of southern Indiana, as far from home as from our hotel, and I'm sick.

Not. A. Good. Situation.

We stopped a total of three times {where I managed to NOT get sick, but boy did I ever think about it} - and arrived safely at our hotel. I. Was. Exhausted.

And that's how we started our vacation. You can only imagine what was to come.