A Short Vacation to Great Wolf Lodge

For years, Jim has saved pennies and other coins in a big water jug. Once the jar is full, we would do something fun with the kids. Our two oldest children would probably remember paying for a day trip to Pier 39 in San Francisco totally with quarters. We would pay for lunch, tour boat cruises, souvenirs and everything totally with quarters. Well, when we moved from our old house a year ago to where we live now, we had a 5 gallon water jug filled with coins. Jim was not in town when we needed to move it to the new house and it was too heavy to pick up so the kids and I had to tip it over and rock it back and forth to get all the coins out. We then put coins into zip lock bags and transported them that way. Now, with the help of a Coin Star machine, we didn't need to count the coins, we just brought them in to have the machine count them. We ended up with over $350.00 from pennies, nickles, dimes, quarters and some dollar coins. We told the kids we would take them to do something special. So, we are on a two night vacation at Great Wolf Lodge in Grand Round, Washington. It is a huge indoor water park with a hotel. When we were driving up here, about an hour out of Portland it began to snow. Funny thing is, I took the chains out of the car yesterday to make room in order to bring stuff to Good Will. It continued snowing and it is now almost 8:30 and it is still snowing. This has been an interesting trip as our car started acting up on the way here also. With it jerking upon acceleration and the check engine light on, we drove the last 20 miles praying that we would make it. Tomorrow, Jim will need to look for a place to get it checked out. Wouldn't you know it, the warranty expired 500 miles ago.

It's hard to see, but it is snowing out there.

It was also hard to get a picture after dark. My camera doesn't take good night pictures.

There is a water slide here called the Howling Tornado. You walk up to the top of the building where the water slide starts. From there you go into a dark tunnel and make a drop down into a funnel where you repeatedly swish and swirl 30 feet up the sides of the funnel, before making a safe splash landing. Erin and I went on the tube another mom and her daughter. At the bottom of the slide, the girls were screaming that they were ready to go again. The other mom and I were rather speechless with stunned looks on our faces. It was my first and last time going on it. Erin immediately went back up to go and went six times before we were done.


After playing in the water park, we went to the restaurant for their buffet. The food was really good but a bit on the spendy side when we were planning on leaving and going to cheaper places to eat. The car giving us troubles kind of put an end to that thought. Just as we were leaving the restaurant, the power went out. We knew it had been windy out. The generators got the power back on right away except in the water park. So, we ended up not being able to go back tonight. There will be more time for swimming tomorrow though.




God has truly blessed us. We booked a room with a balcony and when we got here, we received a room with a patio on the ground floor. Jim went to ask about it and they gave us a balcony room on the fourth floor. They said that they were giving us a large concession. When we got to the room, we found out that they really did. We went from a room with two queen beds and a sofa sleeper which was nice, to a room that would have cost more than twice as much. Our new room has two queen size beds, a separate area with a corner fireplace with the couch/sleeper sofa and it has a separate master bedroom with it's own bathroom with a king size bed. Wow!

We thank the Lord for the blessings he gives us.