Jar of Fun #3

The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays... for more than a decade now, it's meant a visit from my brother Bob and his family.  That is one of the reasons I've been away from the blog for the last week; we had four very busy, fun-filled days with three of my very favorite people and by the time I made it to bed each night, I was exhausted. 

While I certainly don't recommend unemployment, I've discovered one of the benefits to being home full-time... a week with my niece Kayleen!  When Bob went home Tuesday afternoon, he left his little girl (who is not so little any more) here for the week. Yesterday, we let her reach into the Jar of Fun to find our third random outing of the summer - Lakemont Park in Altoona.

Lakemont Park opened in 1894 as a trolley park and is the 8th oldest amusement park in the United States.  It's claim to fame is that it's home to the world's oldest roller coaster - Leap the Dips.  It's also home of The Island Waterpark which is far from the nicest water park I have ever been too, but the kids really enjoyed themselves so I can overlook that. 

Every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is Dollar Day at the park... all day ride and slide passes are just $5 (weekends are $9.95).  The park has an adorable, railroad-themed miniature golf course that honors the area's railroad heritage and that was our first stop of the day.  Also part of Dollar Day, it was just $1 a round to play. I realized pretty quickly that there was no point to keeping score and so we simply enjoyed the opportunity to swing a club on holes like the Gallitzin Tunnel (pictured on the right) and the Horseshoe Curve. 

I'd been to Lakemont twice before, each time successfully avoiding the paddle boats.  This time, my luck ran out and the kids insisted that we ride them.  So, here I am on a HOT, HOT afternoon, pedaling three kids (once of which couldn't even reach the pedal) around the Island Waterpark.  Matt and Kayleen sat in the front telling me it wasn't that hard to paddle the boats - at least until I stopped pedaling and the boat practically came to a stop.  Of course it's not hard when your poor old mom/aunt does 90% of the work... We saw a bunch of Sunnies in the shade and I thought back to summers fishing in the pond behind the Upper Perk pool with Bob and our friend, Jim. We also passed through a bunch of what I think were small-mouth bass hanging out under the bridge between the park and water park waiting for guests to throw pellets of food their way.  To steal a favorite family expression, by the end, I was sweating like a whore in church.  

In fact, all four of us were pretty hot by the time we pulled back up to the dock and so we headed off to the Island Waterpark.  As I said earlier, it's far from the nicest place I've been.  The slides are pretty old, the swimming pool a little cloudy.  Only the Pirate Ship Activity Pool seemed relatively modern to me.

We spent just a few minutes in the swimming pool... mostly because I was bothered watching the pool's lifeguard knitting a scarf as she sat on her post. Instead, I sent Matt and Kayleen off to the water slides, while Cathy and I went back to the Pirate Ship (even though I think she would have passed for 42" she had no interest in the slides and I don't know that I would have felt comfortable sending her down them anyway - at least not before she learns to swim better).

Cousins!

All told, we spent about two hours at the water park before Cathy asked if we could ride some more rides.  At this point, I thought we'd spend another hour or so in the park and then head home so the kids could participate in the Centre Region Parks & Recreation's youth track meet.

After a ride around the park on the train, I tried to talk everyone into riding Leap the Dips.

Leap the Dips

Leap the Dips is the world's oldest wooden roller coaster, and according to Wikipedia, North America's last surviving side-friction roller coaster (meaning it does not have a set of wheels under the tracks to prevent it from becoming airborne). It's a mild ride by today's standards, 41 feet high and reaching speeds of 10 mph, but a good place to start getting Cathy acquainted with a roller coaster other than Grover's Alpine Express.  She resisted at first until we watched a family with several small boys - some looking like they weren't much older than two or three - climb off the ride.  She loved it!

Matt and Kayleen are on here somewhere!

After declaring Leap the Dips to be the best roller coaster ever (how quickly Matt forgot Delgrosso's Crazy Mouse or Idlewild's Rollo Coaster), the big kids eventually made their way to the Skyliner, another wooden roller coaster.  This one borders Blair County Ballpark, where the Pittsburgh Pirates' double-A affiliates, the Altoona Curve, play. The Curve had a home game Wednesday night and the kids thought it was great to see the teams taking batting practice down on the field during their climb up the first hill. The coaster is 60 feet high with a 45 foot drop, making it the tallest coaster Matt has been on to date.

Hooray!  Someone else to carry Cathy!

Overall, it was a great experience and the three kids had a fantastic time.  We never did get out of the park in time to compete in the track meet, but I am not complaining at all.  Each of the kids gave it their highest ratings.  Matt and Kayleen agreed that the water slides and Skyliner were the best part of the park, while Cathy was most enthusiastic about the bumper cars and Leap the Dips.  For me, the best part of the day was watching the three kids together... I could easily get used to life with a (not quite) 10-year old in the house!