Amusement Parks U.S.A. (Remastered 2001)

June 9 – 17, 2021

The Beach Boys released Amusement Parks U.S.A. back in 1965 and they don’t mention Wisconsin Dells. Back then the Dells had duck tours, but the area didn’t become famous for waterparks until the 1970s. I think if Brian Wilson and Mike Love updated the song today, they’d have to include the (self-proclaimed?) water park capital of the world.

After wrapping things up in Madison, we stopped at the dump station and jumped onto the interstate. After a short drive up I-90, we arrived at Yukon Trails RV & Camping Resort, just outside of Wisconsin Dells.

This park doesn’t have any sewer hookups, but it does have water at each site, which was a step up over our stay in Madison. For some reason, we were put in a back corner of the property, which wasn’t frequently used. It was clearly built several decades ago when RVs were smaller. We had a tough time parking, but were eventually able to back in. Once in, it wasn’t too bad of a site as we were nestled in the trees and never had any next door neighbors. It was a bit of a walk over to the shower house though, which we had to use due to the lack of sewer.

We had some fun without ever having to leave the property as they had a playground, mini-golf course, and pool on site.

The park also had a few organized activities while we were there.

One evening there was a party to celebrate birthdays. Not a specific one, but everyone’s. This just happened to fall a day before Izzy’s actual birthday. We had a good time enjoying the hot dog dinner and cake, games, and DJ.

Izzy had an early birthday party back in Omaha, but we had to celebrate the actual day too. We started out with a birthday cake in the morning.

Then, we headed into Wisconsin Dells and visited The Wisconsin Deer Park, which is a walk-through petting zoo that’s full of deer. We bought a pack of “deer food” at the entrance, which were actually just medieval Swedish/Finnish crispbread. Izzy was a little skittish at first, but eventually had a great time feeding and petting the little deer in the park.

There were some non-deer animals in the park too.

After the deer park, we drove across town and did a bit of shopping. I’d always known Wisconsin Dells was famous for it’s waterparks, but it’s a full-blown family tourist town on par with Branson and Pigeon Forge, complete with the requisite unoriginal tourist attractions such as adventure mini-golf, a reptile center, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, a fake Whitehouse, a moonshinery, and a bunch of other lame looking indoor attractions that must make all their money on rainy days.

After picking up some hiking gear for our upcoming adventures, we went to dinner. Since it was Izzy’s birthday, we chose Buffalo Phil’s (or American Bison Phillip’s if your not into the whole brevity thing) and managed to get a table next to the impressive Lego City. The gimmick at this restaurant is that they delivery some of your food and drink via model train, which I have to admit was pretty cool. At one point, they sent around some bubble blowing machines on the train which was fun until one of them fell off and spilled bubble-sauce all over the floor.

Attached to the restaurant was a small indoor arcade/amusement park. We probably normally wouldn’t stop at one, but it was Izzy’s birthday and the restaurant was cleverly designed so that you had to walk into the arcade to get to the bathrooms. This thing was basically a children’s casino, with loud sounds, bright flashing lights, and plenty of machines designed to take your money. Izzy was VERY excited as she’s never been to anything like that before.

We put twenty bucks onto a card and let her pick out some things to do. We played some arcade games, she jumped on a bouncing pillow, played skee-ball for the first time, and won a few tickets. She had a great time, and even was able to redeem her tickets for a tiny plastic lizard that probably cost the arcade less than 10 cents. He’s now called Gil and Izzy loves him. Frequently, I have to do a Gil voice so he and Izzy can have long conversations about Gil’s desire to eat bugs while avoiding creatures that want to eat him.

Now we couldn’t stay in the area and not visit a waterpark, so a few days later, we hit up Mt. Olympus. We chose this park because it was so much less expensive than the other parks, but surprisingly, it wasn’t too bad. There were plenty of water attractions and amusement park rides included with admission.

We hit up the water park stuff first. Izzy had fun running around the splash areas. I was consistently surprised when the giant bucket of icy water tipped over.

Then we all waited in line for 45 minutes to go down a big waterslide on a tube. Izzy was tall enough for the ride, but not by much. We had to slowly climb a lot of stairs while waiting in line. I was afraid she would notice how high we were getting, get cold feet and insist we do the walk of shame back down the stairs through the crowds, but luckily, by the time it occurred to her it might be too scary it was already too late. We all got to ride in a single tube together, and had fun making the 20 second ride down the slide. Izzy seemed to enjoy it in the moment, but then later insists that it was far too scary and she didn’t like that she had to go backwards (she didn’t), and she would never ride that waterslide again, which was perfectly fine with me and Charlotte.

We then found the much tamer little kid area, and did a few laps on the not-that-lazy river. After that, it was time to pay a small fortune for some awful nachos and a slice of pizza before exploring all the non-water rides, seemingly half of which were just go-kart tracks.

At some point we stopped for an overpriced, messy, sticky snack.

Izzy got to ride her first rollercoaster. She loved it so much, she rode it at least five times. Kids would be let off the ride only to sprint around and get back in line.

We found a track with a kart that Izzy was able to drive herself, which was her first real driving experience.

All in all, it was a very fun day. Izzy had a blast and is excited to go back to a waterpark or amusement park again.

Here’s some other stuff we did during our stay!

Izzy learned to put salt on her cantaloupe and now will only eat it salted.

Izzy and I went to the library and attended a presentation on reptiles and amphibians. She got to meet a small albino corn snake named Popcorn and admit that even though she’s afraid of snakes, Popcorn wasn’t scary.

After being inspired by our neighbors at Sugar Bottom Campground in Iowa, Charlotte picked up a hummingbird feeder. We were very excited when we were able to attract a few of the little guys to our spot in the woods! With our tinted windows, the hummingbirds didn’t seem to be able to see us very well, so we could get a good look at them from the other side.

Our final adventure was on the way out of the park. We were parked in an angled back-in site, so there was really only one direction we could head on the narrow road. Unfortunately, that lead to some tight turns that must not have been navigated by a decent sized RV in a while because they were quite overgrown. We had noticed all of this previously, and I mentioned it to park management when they had a crew nearby cutting down a tree, but they didn’t do anything to clean it up. So on the way out of the park, I got to ride on top of the RV while Charlotte drove. We kept in contact with our two-way radios and she slowly approached the low branches so I could saw them down and prevent them from hitting our air conditioners, solar panel, or just scratching up the side of our rig. It was pretty slow going, but we made it!

See you down the road!