Schlitterbahn Water Park!

Though Ryan was in no way opposed to a vacation built around meeting a baby, he did ask if we could spend a day at a water park. Well, sure! (If you are new here and don't know...I am not a water park girl. I don't like any rides of any kind.) He loves them so much and was excited to research a place to go. He landed on Schlitterbahn Water Park in Kansas City.

So Wednesday morning of our vacation, we got up in Joplin, repacked the car, and drove two hours north to Kansas City (Kansas, this time, not Missouri) to spend the day at Schlitterbahn.

Ryan had done all his research and found out that this park had free parking (yay!) and you can take in your own food! So we took our cooler on wheels and stopped at the store before we went in to get some deli turkey and cheese to pair up with all the snacks I'd made at home and taken with us. We packed some water bottles, our sunscreen and beach towels, and got ready for a day at the park!

I will say, this was not an easy park to navigate in terms of getting in the entrance. It wasn't well marked from the part of the interstate we came from, but we found it eventually! (We could see the rides. We just couldn't figure out how to get to them!)

A few pre-park shots:

We got a locker to store our bag, so I didn't have to drag it around with me all day, and we got a map to figure out our plan. We will tell you that we didn't like the park as much as we liked Holiday World, which is in southern Indiana. Schlitterbahn didn't have as many thrill rides, and several of the ones they did have were closed the day we were there. (Short-staffed, I believe.) Most of what they had were slides, and sometimes one of the slides in a trio of them would be closed. So lines were long, but Ryan still had fun. Here are a few pictures of his fun:

(They also didn't have many convenient observation decks like Holiday World has, so I had a few obstacles in trying to figure out when he was actually going to appear in my picture zone!)

We took a break at lunch to sit under this really super nice huge shelter area and eat our snacks. (That shelter area saved my hide in the heat of the day.)

 After lunch, I changed into my swimsuit, too!

We decided to hang out by the pool and try the torrent river. I liked that way more than I thought I would. (I'm more of a lazy river girl.) But I liked it so much we did it twice! (We have no photos of the torrent river because we didn't have a waterproof camera or case for our phones.)

It was super sunny in the morning and clouded up as the day went along, but the heat climbed with or without the sun. By late afternoon, I needed shade and hydration. So Ryan went back to sliding and I went to hydrate. I found him in the lazy river a while later! (I would have done that one if I'd known!)

Ryan said he had a really fun day, even if there weren't as many rides as he expected. (Side note: this park had a fatality two summers ago, and the ride that kid was on is still standing, even though it's closed. I read they can't tear it down until the investigation is complete. It was a terrifying looking thing - although Ryan said he would have absolutely ridden it. Thankfully it wasn't an option!)

We did a few photo opps on our way out of the park....

One of the guys in our Sunday School class told us about a chicken place in Kansas City that he said we should try: Stroud's Chicken. So despite looking (and smelling) rather questionable, we made our way to Stroud's!

I wanted to get the food to go, because, well, see photo above. But we had a two hour drive to our Airbnb for that night, and there really wasn't a good way to eat the dinner we planned in the car. So we stayed to eat it. Thankfully they put us in a very back corner where humanity didn't really see or smell us.

We shared a dinner platter, which had SO. MUCH. FOOD. And it was definitely delicious.

I seriously could have had a perfectly happy day with the cinnamon roll alone.

On our way out of town, we stopped here for the FIRST TIME the whole trip. One week in, and this was our first visit. WHAT?!?!!?!?

And with that, we drove two hours to Columbia, Missouri, to our Airbnb. We were so tired when we arrived, but it had been a very good day!