~ DAY 4 ~

John took a vacation day on Monday to join us at Sahara Sam’s Oasis Indoor/Outdoor Water Park.

This place is less than 15 minutes from home so we saved travel time and gas mileage plus we qualified for discount tickets using our AAA card.  No one was happier to officially be a senior than John that day as his ticket was FREE!  And, FREE makes him very happy 🙂

 After the girls had their early morning tea on the patio, we all met at the water park and it was off to cross the crocodile flats on swaying lily pads. 

Here Jared convinces his PopPop he will not get drenched along the Lazy River Congo Bongo.

Would you had believed that boy?!?

One of us preferred to stay alert and avoid most of the deluges 😉

 For the kids, getting waterlogged was the goal.

 Silas, the youngest stuck close by Jared who kindly accompanied him throughout the day.

 over and over and over they climbed the steps, hopped into their tubes and zoomed down the winding shoots to be deposited in a pool of water at the bottom

 There are four slides and the kids made use of them all. A 350-feet body slide, Snake Eyes for a single person tube or a double person tube and the Kilimanjaro that is family size.   

 Jared accompanied the girls many times 

And you didn’t think he would let me off the hook, did you?

That first curve was quite jolting so I prayed, relaxed (sort of) and looped and swirled to the bottom.

All of the colorful slides wind around the outside of the building.

We saved a bundle of money by bringing lunch.  There is NO food or drinks allowed to be brought into the park so I packed hoagies I made in the morning, orange slices, chips, cookies and drinks.  We headed to the parking lot to have our tailgate lunch.  Not very elegant but the kids devoured it all, even the ones who usually have small appetites!

After lunch, they wanted to return to the inside park.  Then they saw the awesome wave pool.

After watching some really amazing people on the FlowRider Surfing Simulator, Noah and Ryan wanted to give it a try.  We had to sign a special waiver before they could and we weren’t sure how they would do. We’d been watching a lot of people and it looked quite challenging.

I love their faces of determination as they rode the waves and managed to stay on their boards for the duration!

  It was hard to end the day.

“Just once more on the…. 

just once more?

We stayed to nearly closing.