HolyCoast: UnHolyCoast Trip Day 7
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Thursday, July 14, 2005

UnHolyCoast Trip Day 7

Here's all nine trip posts: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Final Day

This was our first morning to wake up in the beautiful Kingsmill Resort. We found out the walls are rather thin, especially when the neighbors start running their shower. Oh well, it was like that in Las Vegas too.

Mrs. HolyCoast and I decided to take advantage of the free breakfast in the Bray Restaurant, and wow, that was a major step up from what we had in Washington every day. They had just about anything you'd ever want, including an omelet chef who built them to your specs. My kind of guy.

We took advantage of a special "early opening" offer at Busch Gardens that is available to us since we're staying here (it's all owned by Busch properties). That got us in the park one hour before the general opening and gave us access to a few of the attractions. There was only one roller coaster open at that time, so the kids road it four times. There wasn't much else to do until the rest of the park woke up, so we won't be going in early tomorrow.

The kids went off to ride all the vomit-inducing stuff, and the Mrs. and I chose the more sedate attractions, like the Sky Ride that took us over much of the park. The park is just chocked full of trees and is very pretty, especially from the air.


We also rode the steam train which takes a 20 minute trip around the park and crosses a scenic trestle over the Rhine River (a man-made 60 acre lake in the park).

As the train was arriving in the area of the park known as "New France" (that's the France that doesn't automatically surrender), my phone rang and it was the kids calling from the other side of the park. They had just gone on a water ride that soaked them to the bone, and given that you can't dry off in this humidity, they decided they didn't want to spent the rest of the day like that. Here's what they looked like when we caught up with them.

We all decided to head back to the resort to dry off and spend a little time relaxing before returning to the park. We had an excellent lunch at the Regatta Restaurant, and then played ping-pong and pool for an hour or so. The girls decided to get in some pool time, and the boy and I headed to the complimentary 9 hole 3-par golf course that's right near our suite. They loaned us the clubs and we bought some golf balls and headed out onto the course. It was brutally hot and humid, but since the holes ranged from 60 to 120 yards, we thought we could handle it.

I haven't played golf in years and the boy is just learning, so we made quite a pair. Fortunately, there was nobody else close to to us on the course so we didn't embarrass ourselves too bad. By the time we finished we both looked like someone had turned a hose on us.

We crashed for awhile back in the room, and then the kids went on ahead and caught the shuttle back to the park. We headed over there an hour later and met up with them for the usual "Dad, we need some money" talk.

We road the river ride, which is very pretty, had dinner, and watched the sky darken once again. We began to see lightning off in the distance, and I decided it was time to go. The kids weren't ready yet, so they stayed behind with their Mom and I came back to the room to get the blogging done. I had a bit of a surprise when I walked up to our room...the door was standing wide open! For a moment I had a complete panic at the thought that we'd been robbed and this computer, and all the other valuable stuff was now gone, but thankfully, that was not the case. Whoever was last out must have forgotten to close the door, and because our front door is somewhat hidden, no one probably noticed it. This is our building, and our room is down the stairs and to the right. You can't see the door from the street.

Tomorrow is our last full day here, and the last full day of vacation. We'll probably spend it in much the same way as today, with part of it at the park, and part of it doing stuff in the resort. We'll make the most of it.

See you tomorrow night!

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