Well the past few days were Stacy and I’s much needed getaway to the Wisconsin Dells.  We had missed our trip to Nashville and then to Kentucky due to her herniated disc.  I needed the break from work.  Stacy needed to get out of her apartment.  We needed something fun.  Of course, things don’t always work according to plan.  I believe the quote goes something like “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  Well here we go with the good, the bad and the ugly of the trip to the Dells.Stacy always thought that my intense hatred for Wisconsin was silly and unfounded.  She thought it was just me grandstanding which I have a tendency to do.  After this trip…she definitely sees the merits in my arguments.

We left Sunday afternoon after I got to DeKalb.  I didn’t sleep hardly at all after getting home from the wrestling because I was looking forward to going.  That’s love when I’m actually looking forward to going to Wisconsin.  We hooked up the Garmin GPS and took off for our vacation.  We get to Janesville, Wisconsin and I’m starving.  We decide it is time to eat lunch and we found the motherload of all things great at the 171 set of exits in Janesville.  Fuddruckers.  Hooters.  Perkins.  Olive Garden.  Fazoli’s.  Cracker Barrel.  My head exploded trying to decide where to go.  Fuddruckers was chosen since we don’t have one around here to go to and we have the rest (minus Perkins).  I walked into the Fuddruckers and was immediately in heaven due to seeing a 1 pound hamburger on the menu.

I powered through the burger and then to make Stacy laugh at my stupidity, I decided that I was going to act like her cats.  As soon as they both get done eating, they have to groom their faces.  So as soon as I pushed the empty plate aside, it was time to groom myself in the restaurant while people looked at me like I was two fries short of a happy meal:

We left the Fuddruckers and finished the rest of the trip to the Dells.  We stopped at the timeshare welcome center to get our coupon for the $50 gift card and find out which Best Western we were going to be staying in.  Luckily, we got the good one in the Dells instead of the mediocre one in Baraboo.  We upgraded the room for a total of $66 for the two nights to get a hot tub in our room.  The hot tub was huge.  We had a fridge, microwave and couch before even getting to the area with the bed and the tv.

We decide to look through the phonebook to try to find a Hooters or something that might be showing the TNA ppv so we could watch Mickie.  We found a “Honkers” and a “Hootey’s” but no Hooters.  We didn’t really feel like going out for supper so we decided to call for pizza.  It had started raining and storming a little bit so that was the reason we didn’t want to go outside.  Well the pizza place notified us that they couldn’t deliver because the roads were flooded…evidently they had been getting serious rain all weekend.  So we walked across the parking lot to the Denny’s.  2 country fried steaks later, I was stuffed and miserable and ready to keep checking the message board to see what people were saying about Mickie’s performance on the ppv.  Instead, all I read about are people talking about the name she is given.  I won’t discuss it any further.  I’m proud of one of my best friends making it to a grand stage and making it to ppv and national television.  Her Springer appearance you tube video went from 1,000 views on Thursday afternoon to over 6,000 views as of last night after the appearance on Spike TV and then the ppv so she is obviously getting seen by lots of people courtesy of getting into TNA and people were wanting to see more.  She’s been viewed by people on every continent except Antartica which is quite impressive.

I watch the end of the Cubs victory on Sunday night Baseball and then we go to sleep so we can be well rested for our activities on Monday.

The time share presentation was murder.  We got lost because we didn’t have the address to put into the Garmin…just some makeshift map that they gave us at the welcome center.  We decided to search for the gas station on the Garmin that they gave us as a landmark of where to turn at so we could get to the presentation.  As soon as we turn in to the place I let out a scream.  They were cabins in the woods.  Cabins in the woods.  I already have a cabin in the woods and I haven’t been there in 5 years…BECAUSE I DON’T DO CABINS…NOR THE WOODS.  So we check in and wait for our tour.  The lady asks some questions and I inform her that their setup is the absolute worst thing it could be to get me to buy into it.  They ensure us that if we buy, we can always go to their other resorts in more oceany locales that aren’t cabins in the woods.  As she is driving us through the campground with RVs and cabins for all the eyes to see, she keeps saying things like “how do you like the view of the ocean over there…sand, water, sun.”  My imagination isn’t good enough to picture that through all the bugs, insects, trees and campers.  The cabins were small and crappy to boot.  Then we had to deal with a snobby British punk with the last name of Halfpenny as the business dealer to try to make the sale to us at the end of the presentation.  He asks why we don’t want to buy today and we respond that with gas prices the way they are, we don’t know how much traveling we are going to do.  He tells me to stop complaining because “we Brits have to pay triple what you do for gas.”  Well whoopedy doo!  You don’t ever tell someone that you are trying to get to spend $25K on a shitty cabin in the woods to stop complaining.  He then asked if there was anything else other than gas prices keeping us from buying.  I said that I wasn’t ready to take on more debt right now and he wigged out and said “well if you view this as debt then you have missed the entire point of the presentation” and sent us on our way.  How can financing $25,000 NOT BE VIEWED AS TAKING ON DEBT????  If I wasn’t hungry, I would have headbutted him just out of general principle but we had our $50 gift card for 120 minutes of agony along with our free (well $33 a night upgrade for the hot tub room) hotel so we just left.

Ponderosa for lunch and I ordered the country fried steak and made Stacy order one as well so I could eat it because she just wanted the regular buffet.

We then decided to look into water parks since it was done raining.  Everything closed at 6 for the waterparks…it was already almost 4.  How does the waterpark capital of the world have waterparks that close at 6 pm in the summer?  Ah yes…it is Wisconsin.  So I decide to be a little adventurous and had Stacy call about wave riders or jet skis on the lake.  The lady asked if we had watched the news at all because the dam broke so there was no more lake and a bunch of houses had washed away…so no jet skis, no wave riders, no canoes, no kayaks but we could take a boat tour but the last tour starts at 5 so we would have to get there in 15 minutes.  We could have gone on a carriage ride tour…that lasted 15 minutes.  So needless to say, we were not very impressed with our stay in Wisconsin Dells.  Well we finally found a waterpark that was inside a resort that was also open to the public and was open to 10 pm.  So that was actually some fun.  We stayed until close mostly just doing the lazy river because Stacy couldn’t climb the stairs to get up to the slides.  We went to Denny’s afterwards because everything else was closed.  We then walked next door to the Mobil so we could have drinks for overnight.  Mobil closed at 10.  So we get in the car and drive to Citgo.  Closed at 10.  So we drive up the street to Shell…closed at 10.  Only thing that was open on a Monday night after 10 pm???  Walgreens.  Tourist mecca in the midwest and everything is closed by 10 pm.  Only in Wisconsin.

So Tuesday morning arrives and since there is absolutely nothing to do in the Dells, we head out to go to Cave of the Mounds an hour south.  We decide to stop and eat at this little local diner for lunch on our way out of town.  The Dells got redeemed.  I knew I would like the place as soon as I walked in and saw this sign:

They had a “challenge” on their menu.  Eat a 1 1/2 pound triple stacked cheeseburger with fries and applesauce and get a free tshirt.  I’m always up for a challenge:

That wasn’t even close to a challenge.

I finished that snack of a meal in about 10 minutes.  I then had dessert:

Two scoops of the fattiest most delicious ice cream I’ve ever had.  The cup had this written on it about nutrition facts:  “This isn’t low fat, low calorie, low anything.  If you want nutrition, eat a carrot.”  This place needs to be closer to me.  Seriously.

We then went to a Cheese store and I discovered that I had a rat in Wisconsin:

Stacy had the same rat:

Then I had to avoid getting eaten by a dinosaur while getting gas:

So it was finally time to wrap and wind and twist our way into way out in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin to go to the Cave of the Mounds.

We stepped back far enough in time to see a Piggly Wiggly!

For the wrestling fans…”the KING is on the card…get your tickets at the Piggly Wiggly”

The Garmin sort of failed us though as it got us to a big red barn as the finish line for the cave.  We called the place to see how close we were.  We were literally right on top of it.  Behind the red barn down the hill was the cave which went under the barn.  So Garmin didn’t quite fail us.

So then it was time to go exploring in the cave:

After getting home and going through my pictures, I think we might have been in a haunted cave.  I didn’t notice this until looking at the pictures (about 15 in all that I took in the cave and this is the only picture that had anything like it in it):

So that was our trip to Wisconsin Dells.  Floods.  Everything closing early.  Haunted Caves.  Waterparks.  Rude British people.  Cabins in the woods.  One pound burgers and one and a half pound burgers getting eaten.  It was time away from work and time spent together so overall, it was a great time even with the badness of Wisconsin trying its damnedest to ruin things.

So until next time,  Good day.