Heritage Park

The kids and I met up with Auntie Kait and Uncle Matthew for some good old fashioned today. My sister had been wanting to do a Heritage Park day for a long time now and finally the scheduled day arrived. The kids were excited but I have to admit that I was a little hesitant and had low expectations. It seemed like I would be spending a lot of money for a lot of nothing. Sounds fun, right. Well guess what!? It was fun, and I got a lot more bang for my buck then I had anticipated. Apparently they just changed their admissions to include everything inside the park (with the exception of food) so we got to ride the train, the boat and the amusement park rides at no extra cost. There was more to do but we hadn't allotted enough time to really get the full experience and what really surprised me was that I would totally go back for an entire day.
The very first thing we did was hop on the train and head to the boat. The timing was perfect and so we didn't have to wait for either. The train ride was fun as we passed the ranch and saw all the animals and they had these cute old men as the conductors. The boat ride was beautiful and it was relaxing to just look out over the water and see so much green.

From the boat ride we booked it to the bakery where we bought some lunch goods. I splurged and bought a loaf of sour dough bread and bribed the kids to eat it without olive oil and balsamic to dip it in with fresh chocolate chunk cookies. We sat down to eat just off Main St and the older kids raced through Uncle Matthews obstacle orders while Madison forced down her lunch. At one point Kait joined in on the races and eventually had to forfeit due to summersault dizziness.
The amusement park was next and each of the rides has a plaque that explains the history of the ride and when it came out, for example: The caterpiller was made in 1929 with courting couples in mind and was so popular they couldn't keep up with the demand. This was probably due to the fact that not long into the ride a big cloth covers goes around and covers the ride so that if you wanted to make out and kiss your companion you wouldn't have an audience. I think that you would really have to work for that kiss on the ride because it was really quite bumpy and Madison jerked around quite a bit. There is nothing wrong with a man having to work for a kiss though....
On our way out we walked through Gasoline alley and admired the old cars and how they changed over the years. Our last stop was a little Big Rock Brewery show room where the kids learned that Hops were used to make beer.

Like I mentioned before, it was fun and I would definitely go back again for an entire day. The kids enjoyed it as well, their favourite part was the rides of course!