Hometown Date: Kokomo Beach and Ribfest

Before I tell you about our hometown date, I will tell you that we were pretty slap happy on this week's podcast. Stay to the end...right in the middle of being spiritually deep, Ryan found a phrase he cannot pronounce, even after a dozen tries. And I left them alllllllllllllll in there for you. :) You're welcome.

 Click here to listen.

And now...on to our hometown date.

Two Saturdays ago, Ryan had the whole day off work and we didn't have any commitments to be anywhere. That never happens. So he declared it a day of fun, and I happily accepted.

It was about 95 degrees that day, so we decided to check out Kokomo Beach, which, for the record, has no beach. {Ryan said it used to be called the Sea Shore and it doesn't have one of those either!}

Kokomo Beach has a pool, a lazy river, a splash pad, some slides, and probably other things I never even found, and I will say for a city of this size, it is a very nice offering for the community, and on a 95 degree Saturday, the community responded well. We arrived shortly after it opened at 11 and waited quite a while even to enter. They were great to have some employees outside helping newbies like us know the drill of what to expect and some of the rules we'd need to obey.

{A sign that cracked us up because we are overgrown tweenagers.}

Ahhhh the maximum bather load.

By the time we got inside, all the chairs had been claimed, but we did manage to get a locker, which was really helpful for my peace of mind {didn't have to leave our phones and FitBits out in plain sight when we went into the water} and actually, we enjoyed our little perch on the grass under a tree!

{The view from our perch.}

 It was pretty calm {comparatively speaking} in the morning, but by the afternoon, it was packed with lines everywhere. There were lines to even get INTO lines or to get tubes for the slides and lazy river.

But in the morning? No lines. So Ryan took advantage and did a couple of trips down the slides. I stood with the moms and took pictures because slides are just beyond me. {Yes, I really am that boring at a water park!}

We did the lazy river too, where I sustained a skinned knee upon my exit. I am nothing if not graceful. {Eyeroll.}

And then we just rested and watched people for a bit!

They do have a food court there at the beach, but we figured it didn't have a clean eating section, so we got our hands stamped and went to Subway. {You can come and go for one price throughout the day, so they just stamp your hand when you leave, and you show your hand when you return!}

By the time we got back, the parking lots were full, so we parked forever away, walked through a park, where we paused to eat our food, and then walked the rest of the way back to the beach.

 We did hit the pool for a bit in the afternoon, but it was pretty well packed with families, so we didn't stay in long before we returned to people watching {me} and napping {Ryan}.

By mid-afternoon, we were ready to go, so we came home and took a nap, and then we went back out that night for the second hometown fun of the day: Ribfest! Ribs are pretty much Ryan's food love language, so an entire festival of them appealed to him! I always like to check out a festival, so I was up for it! Local restaurants set up tents and cooked ribs in huge smokers at the edge of the park, and there were all the other sorts of food vendors you might expect to find, too: elephant ears, kettle corn, lemon shake-ups...all of it.

They had some bouncy houses for kids, bands for the adults, and it was a good little evening of fun! {And it's a good thing we did the clean eating at lunch, because I think we majorly fell off that wagon at Ribfest!}

 We got chicken kabobs {after all that with the rib loving!!} and they were good!

They had standing tables around the park, so Ryan dragged one over beside some weeds so we could eat with a measure of privacy. And then he left to find corn on the cob. Came back with this:

{Yeah that's an elephant ear.}

Eventually he settled on more meat and a sweet tea, and I got a strawberry smoothie.

And that was our night! People watching from park benches, enjoying some treats, and having a great time in our very own hometown!