But I digress. The reason I'm back to blogging now is that Tuesday at Darien Lake, Joe mentioned we were having a blog-worthy moment, and when Joe says I should blog it, then I do. :) So here I am.
So Tuesday was an excellent day. We had concert tickets, so decided to take the whole day off from work to spend at the park (I love vacation time!). Luckily it turned out to be a beautiful, sunny, warm day -- last year when we went it was sunny but cold. We wore our bathing suits and our handy "Cave of the Winds" sandals from our last trip up to the Falls. What's funny is that we weren't the only ones in the park making use of those sandals. :)
We only did one roller coaster this year: the Viper. I love the Viper, even though it's old and loud and maybe not the biggest thrill around these days. Rides have not been agreeing with me quite the way they used to (last Saturday at the Erie County Fair was the low point) which I lament, but I also don't like spending the day with a headache or upset stomach, so we took it easy. Luckily I am blessed with a sweetie who didn't seem to mind. :) We rode the Log Flume (twice!), which remains my favorite ride, and sang the Pirate song and yelled "Holy Crap!" from the top of the hills. :D We posed for the camera on the Viper, even though the pictures are too expensive to actually buy. :P Joe drove me around in the Tin Lizzy's (he's a much better driver than I am, although I think that's half the fun!) and we chased each other around on the bumper cars. We got soaked on Grizzly Run and spent the rest of the afternoon in the water park (Joe had never been on water slides before!), then put on dry clothes for dinner, the Carousel, the Ferris Wheel, and finally the concert.
The "bloggable" moment that Joe brought up was actually in regards to the low point of our day, and that was easily the food. The first thing we decided to go for was fried dough for a mid-morning snack. You know it's not a good sign when you order fried dough and the girl manning the booth pulls it out of a warming pan. Um, hello? FRIED dough? It's supposed to be light, doughy, and dripping with grease! This stuff had probably been made the day before for all we could tell, it was hard, it was tough, it shattered and the sugar flew off in every direction. We made a huge mess trying to eat it, and there wasn't even a spot of grease on the paper plate when we were done. That was a big disappointment.
We held off eating again until dinnertime, and thought we'd try out Maria's Spaghetti House for something a little more substantial than the typical pizza or burger and fries. Maybe we were expecting too much, but this place ended up being cafeteria 'Italian' food for Italian restaurant prices. Joe got the chicken parmesan, which is the same chicken parm you'd get at Erie Dining Hall at Fredonia (literally). I got the "sampler", which was supposed to be chicken parm and lasagne. The chicken parm was fine, not spectacular, not worth the $11.99 they were charging, but certainly edible and we both ate it. The lasagne was not so good. But the worst thing about my plate was that the "cook" who prepared it seemed to have put the lasagne and chicken parm on it and then dumped an entire vat of foul-smelling Sysco tomato sauce straight from the can over the top. (And as Joe said, there's nothing wrong with using the Sysco sauce as a base, at Bob Evans they add seasonings and it turns out pretty good, but this stuff was literally straight from the can, and it was nasty.) When the waitress set the plate down it looked like a bowl of tomato sauce with a breadstick on the side, and I had to dig the chicken out. The only way to eat it was not to smell it. The worst part was the bill came out to $40 for the two of us, and we can eat REAL Italian for half that. Do NOT eat at Maria's Spaghetti House, people. Run, run away. Get a burger. Use the $30 you saved to go on the SkyCoaster.
*clears throat* So um, yeah. Food not good. After the huge disappointment that was "dinner" we thought, well, we'll just have an ice cream cone before the concert. They can't mess up the ice cream, after all, it's Perry's and all they have to do is scoop it. So we went to the ice cream parlor and ordered two waffle cones. As we headed back outside, licking away, Joe said, "At least the ice cream is good. They didn't screw it up. Well... except that they didn't have the flavor we wanted." And I said, "Yeah... well actually, not having the flavor we wanted was the only way they COULD screw it up." So Darien Lake was three for three, having messed up every single food purchase we made that day, and that was our blog-worthy moment.
Moral of the story: don't eat at amusement parks. But... the ice cream was still good, even though it was a second choice. :)
The last (and best!) part of our day was seeing Journey live in concert. That was pretty awesome, they played a ton of stuff we knew of course, as well as some new things, and even though it took the crowd awhile to warm up, everybody was having a great time by the end. We had excellent seats too, which always helps! We got Journey's new cd for free which we thought was pretty cool. ("You know how much money they're spending, to hand this out for all the fans?" Joe kept saying. He was impressed.) :) There was no opening act; instead, since it's their 30th anniversary tour, they played stuff from the seventies for the first hour (most of which we didn't know), ending that on "Any Way You Want It" for an intermission (during which I made sure Joe got his t-shirt!), and then played 80's-90's-new stuff for two hours. We stood for pretty much the entire second half, and yelled a lot and clapped a lot and sang/screamed all the words to all the songs we knew and danced and rocked and waved our hands and if we'd had a lighter... you know how it goes! :) I loved watching the guitar player, he had some funny facial expressions and somehow he never seemed to get tired, even though I think he played the entire thing with hardly a break (he was the one playing all the solos so the rest of the band could rest!). The bass player and lead singer were fun to watch too. The only complaint I had was that when the keyboard guy was playing on the grand piano, you couldn't see his fingers -- that's always neat. (And yes, I know, I should know their names but I don't. :P) I love the ballads "Open Arms" and "Faithfully" but my favorite song of the night was probably "Don't Stop Believin'". Everybody just seemed the most into that one, or maybe it was just me, I'm not sure but it was a fun one! They did one encore and ended the night on "Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin'" which I like (especially since Joe showed me the lyrics) and the crowd sang all the "nah-nah-nah"s. A great show overall, even if it wasn't the liveliest crowd we've been in, but I think we both had a great time. Then to top it off, after the concert ended, Joe and I were cutting across rows of seats in order to avoid the people crowding the aisles, and I found a guitar pick. :)
And so, a recap of the highlights of our day. The food was bad, but there were a lot of good points too!
Girl and Guy: "Hey you want one of these cd's?"
Joe (walking right by): "No, thanks."
Girl and Guy: "But they're FREE!"
Joe (whirling around): "They're what??!"
All in all, a very nice way to spend a day. Much nicer than work anyway. :D And hey what do ya know... I actually updated my blog. ;)