25-state, 40-park, month-and-a-half, post-pandemic extravaganza

[MestnyiGeroi]

Day Twenty-One: Oklahoma

Today I visited Frontier City, in Oklahoma, a state I’ve never been to before.

Oklahoma City is large enough to have an NBA team, but their only amusement park is small, and it has a community feel, despite being taken over by Six Flags in recent years. The park’s biggest asset is its theming, which, as the name suggests, harks back to the days when Oklahoma was a frontier territory. There aren’t different lands or areas in the park; the entire place has the consistent Western theming, which is quite nice.

I didn’t take many photos, but here’s a tiny, random sampling:




The woodie, Wildcat, was a nice ride, but rather tame with no air.

Silver Bullet is a Schwarzkopf Looping Star, and it’s a very strange coaster. The vertical loop and several other moments in the ride have serious force to them, and the strange, violent laterals during the drops reminded me of Quimera, except with Quimera one is (was) fully strapped in, whereas on this coaster I was repeatedly thrown across the seat while dropping — a bizarre sensation.

Diamond Back, the Arrow Shuttle Loop coaster, was closed for the duration of my stay. I’ve heard from so many spited visitors to this park over the years that I didn’t expect Diamond Back to be open, and yet it was still disappointing to find it closed. In fact, I’d have to say that it did put a bit of a damper on my estimation of the whole park — why have one of your few coasters never open?

Anyway, as I said, the theming was the best aspect of the park. I had fun on a unique, well-themed rapids ride, and I rode a shoot-em-up dark ride. The latter was a near-exact replica of the same dark ride at Family Kingdom, with one very notable exception: here when you shoot the target for the señorita, she screams in the same way but her skirt does not fly up.

On the whole, it was only a few hours at the park, making for a shorter, more relaxed day (albeit a scorcher here in Oklahoma). Tomorrow, by contrast, will be a packed day in which I try to hit two parks and make it across the Texas Panhandle entirely to spend the night in Tucumcari, New Mexico. I hope I manage everything.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Day Twenty-Two: Texas

This day felt epic in scope.

I began the day by driving from Oklahoma City to Amarillo, Texas, the entire route being one highway, Interstate 40. This is part of what used to be called Route 66, the so-called mother road, a legendary route associated with 50s-style travel, but with roots in the Great Depression, when the Dust Bowl forced “Okie” farmers to head out on exactly the route I took today.

I had a little pre-coasters mission: to find a Whataburger (a Texas burger chain) that serves a Dr. Pepper milkshake — that’s not a Dr. Pepper and ice cream float; that’s a shake in which the ice cream is Dr. Pepper flavored. I knew it was a long shot, but quests such as these are made for the stout of heart (and waistband). I had found in advance two Whataburgers on the way to the Amarillo park I was heading for, and I stopped at both. Neither had it. Failure. The featured shake flavor: Peaches and Cream. How the milkshake gods mock me.

Wounded but undeterred, I pushed on for my first park of the day: Wonderland. This park is really a must-do for any coaster enthusiast in the area. It is the Skyline Park of the U.S., by which I mean all of the coasters here are oddballs.

The first coaster was Cyclone, a wild mouse like none I’ve ever done before. The cars are just big enough for one person. They are tiny, 60s-looking egg-mobiles and you sit on the floor. Each of the wild mouse zig-zags throws the rider against the side, and because one is sitting on the floor the drops feel intense. This was like no wild mouse I had ever ridden.

Then there is Mouse Trap, a Pinfari Zyklon on steroids.



The highlights here are the first two drops, which are insanely steep and long. If you sit in the back of the three-car train, you are whipped over the top and the drop is an utter freefall. It’s astounding! The rest of the ride is mostly zippy helices, but the adrenaline rush from those drops lasts the entire ride.

Then there is the legendary Texas Tornado. Coaster enthusiasts know this ride for the bizarre re-engineered vertical loops, but believe me, the ride is every bit as bizarre as the coaster looks. On the lift hill, you’re totally parallel to the highway. On my first ride in the front row, I waved to a trucker who waved back. Then the drops are intense, especially at the back, with a crunching landing. Then the loops feel every bit as weird as they look. The odd flat approach to the first loop, the dive under a tree for the second loop, the weird timing of the loops themselves, the monster g-forces in the back row, and then the dive into a dark shed afterward — this is a crazy ride.

After Wonderland, I drove south to Lubbock, Texas, to visit Joyland. This park felt like an echo of Wonderland in some ways. Both parks are classic, old-school community parks — real slices of Americana. Both have long, narrow layouts. And they have some similar coasters. The Galaxi coaster here was fun, but in layout it felt like a neutered version of Wonderland’s Mouse Trap, especially with the drops being half as long.



They have three coasters and one, Sand Storm, was closed.

After the park I had dinner at an upscale tapas restaurant () just off Buddy Holly Avenue (he was from Lubbock).

After dinner I drove from Lubbock to Tucumcari, New Mexico. This route is off the beaten path of any major highway, and the drive on the whole felt intense and surreal. I drove through dark, desert highways, gripping the wheel and straining my eyes to see where I was going. No one ever passed me, but for the last 100 miles I could sometimes see a pair of headlights behind me in the great distance. Slowly, slowly they were catching up. I was listening to a “Route 66 playlist” of music from Spotify, and the list hit an appropriately dark and moody section of songs as I drove through the blackness. Toward the end of the drive, Hotel California came on, and the song finished just as the car behind me finally caught up to me and I simultaneously emerged from the desert and entered the lights of Tucumcari and my hotel right away. If you’re not familiar with the classic song, it’s about a strange, haunting experience of driving on a “dark, desert highway,” and reaching a surreal hotel that feels like something out of a dream. At the very least, the timing of it all felt amazing.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Day Twenty-Three: New Mexico

The last three days have been packed and I have fallen behind on the posts here. I’m going to try to catch up right now in two posts.

So after that surreal night desert drive into Tucumcari, New Mexico, I awoke to a different cultural world from the last state. Tucumcari prides itself on being a key Route 66 town, and there were pretty amazing 1950s cars all over the place.

Then when I hit the road, I realized I had awoken in a Roadrunner-and-Coyote landscape. The drive from the east to Albuquerque is not supposed to be one of the more scenic parts of this beautiful state, but it wowed me.

I had been waiting for months to have some New Mexican cuisine, which is a blend of Mexican and Navajo traditions, with a tiny pinch of the Anglo thrown in. I knew I wouldn’t be in town long, so I decided to seek out Frontier Restaurant, an Albuquerque institution near the university that is hugely popular with locals. And on a Sunday morning it was massively packed with people, but the place is built to handle high-capacity crowds insanely well (take note amusement parks). My food was delicious, and as New Mexicans like it spicy, my taste buds were glowing for about an hour afterward.

Albuquerque in general has great (excuse the expression) ‘theming’ (lol), as the architecture is consistently kept up everywhere — everything is in earth tones: salmon, sandstone, and rust. Even the freeway barriers were done in this sandstone style.

This day’s park was Cliff’s Amusement Park, and it was massively packed on a Sunday. New Mexico doesn’t have an ethnic majority — it’s about one third Anglo, one third Hispanic, and one third Navajo — and I enjoyed hearing Navajo spoken around me for the first time in my life.

The park is nicely themed — a bit of a general Western theme but with a Southwestern flavor. I managed all the coasters. There was an SBF Spinner and a Galaxi very similar to the one at Joyland. But there was also a clear star here:



First the unpleasant part: one-train ops on such a busy day were annoying. I waited about 45 minutes for the front row, and then later a bit less than half an hour for the back row. And those were the only two rides I got.

Now for the good news: The New Mexico Rattler was about twice as good as I expected. It wasn’t filled with great airtime, but it most definitely had an strong out-of-control feeling. It is a wild coaster — a bit rough, but in a good way, and it really throws you around, rattling through its course at what feels like a breakneck speed. This is one that should be on more enthusiasts’ radars. I think if it were in a more popular park, it would be a lot better known.

I left Cliff’s in the late afternoon and headed north for a long drive to Pueblo, Colorado. Here the landscape shifted dramatically again, with huge sweeping valleys and mountains, and those distinctive Western mesas cropping up everywhere. In the last valley before reaching Pueblo, there were signs warning drivers about the winds, and soon it started feeling as if invisible bison were randomly ramming the side of the car.

As I reached my hotel there was a flash flood warning on my phone, but whatever bad weather hit that night I had avoided it.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Day Twenty-Four A: Colorado — A Tale of Two Radically Different Parks

OK, so I lied about catching up in two posts, as I think I need to split this day’s post into two. The contrasting qualities of the two parks of the day mean the holiness of the one should not be contaminated with the wretchedness of the other.

In the morning I drove straight from Pueblo, Colorado to Denver’s Elitch Gardens. The original Elitch’s is a park with rich history that makes it important in the story of American amusement parks. And in its early days it was presided over for a long time by a woman, the widowed Mary Elitch, something unique in early park history.

But Elitch’s cut itself off from all that history when it moved in 1994, and built a far more generic and less interesting park. There were two (and a half) highlights here for me, but it’s easier to speak first about why this park seemed crappy to me on my visit. The food and drink are the most overpriced I have seen at an amusement park, and that’s saying quite a lot. The big celebrity coasters at this park that get the locals excited are a boomerang and an SLC. Ugh. The boomerang was fine as a ride, but I had to wait at least 45 minutes for it. As for the SLC, when it’s named Mind Eraser, you know it’s going to be bad, and it was, even by SLC standards. Just jerky and uncomfortable.

As for Sidewinder, an Arrow shuttle looper and the coaster I was most excited to ride, it was down all day and had apparently been down all week. As with Frontier City, I had heard for years that the Arrow shuttle coaster here was an elusive ride, but still it was disappointing — and vaguely vexing that a park with so few coasters can so rarely manage to keep one of them open.

On the whole, this is a distinctly crappy park, and I feel sorry for those who consider this their home park.

Now for the positive two and a half points, in increasing order.

The “half” positive point is my sense that the opening areas (the areas closest to the entrance) looked nice and had more atmosphere than I expected. The farther out in the park you go, the more generic it all becomes.

Next, I had heard for years that Twister II was a poor coaster, so I was pleasantly surprised by it. It’s not great, but it’s fun — rickety, but not too rough, some fun hills albeit without airtime. And before I rolled out on the first of my two rides (first front row then back row), the station announcer said something about “testing the sprinklers.” I still don’t know if that was a literal statement, or a jokey way of describing a feature, but at about six places in the coaster, water was dripping down from above and splashed the riders. If anyone else has ridden this coaster, I’d be curious to know if you experienced this. But by the end it felt like half a wooden coaster and half a water ride.

But by far the best thing at this park was a dark ride so completely out of place at Elitch’s — and it would be out of place at almost any amusement park. It is a dark ride created by Meow Wolf, an art collective out of Santa Fe.



It’s called Kaleidescape. This ride is so strangely surreal, so brazenly post-modern, that it doesn’t feel like a dark ride. It feels very much like a Dadaist exhibit meant to troll the general public. I don’t want to create the impression that it’s a “fun” ride in the usual sense — it isn’t — but it’s hugely enjoyable just as a bit of hilarious and audacious bizarreness. Even funnier, when you exit the ride there is a gift shop across the hall — with not a single customer in it — promoting nonsensical items for one of the most insistently anti-commercial rides ever.

Frankly, this one bit of whimsical absurdity made coming to this park worth it.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Day Twenty-Four B: Colorado

From the profane to the sacred.

In planning this trip, I knew that I wanted to hit both parks in Denver, Elitch’s and Lakeside. When I looked up their schedule months ago, I saw that Elitch’s was open Monday but closed Tuesday, whereas info for Lakeside was a little spottier (it closed for quite a while during the pandemic), it seemed to be open both days. So I went to Elitch’s on the Monday, thinking I’d hit Lakeside Tuesday.

I finished at Elitch’s Monday afternoon, and then checked into my downtown Denver hotel. I then used my free time to explore the downtown area and have dinner. I returned to my hotel in the evening, and on a whim decided to check again on Lakeside’s hours for the next day. CLOSED TUESDAY! The website said it’d be closed the next day, when it was Elitch’s that I thought would be closed.

My first thought was a resigned one: too bad I’d miss this park I’ve been wanting to see for many years (it was also featured on the 90s PBS doc called Great Old Amusement Parks).

Then suddenly it hit me: wait, Lakeside has strange nighttime hours. Looked it up: 7-11 pm. What time is it now? 6:45 pm. How far away is the park? A 12-minute drive. Right — I’m on my way now!!

So, before I knew it I was at the park. Free parking in a dirt and gravel parking lot. A massive line of locals queued up to get in on a Monday night. Admission was something like $15. It felt like Colorado’s answer to Knoebels.

Then within about 5 minutes inside the park something else happened that was like my Knoebels experience: I fell in love with the place. Maybe not to the full extent of Knoebels, one of my favorite parks in the world, but a clear parallel to that experience.

Before I wax lyrical and romanticize the aspects of this park that blew me away, let me first say more objectively: just the coasters alone were better than Elitch’s. By far.

I am a rider who always puts his hands up. I don’t feel that I’m fully experiencing a coaster, not fully flying and letting go, unless I have my hands up. But both the main coasters here have serious warnings about holding on to the bar with your hands, and something told me I had better listen. I was glad I did. I don’t think it would be possible — or at least sane — for me to ride these coasters not holding on.

The Wild Chipmunk was similar in design to the one described earlier at Wonderland. But this one is still crazier. At the top of the lift hill the little one-man egg cart I was sitting on the floor of slammed downward so fast that I hit the back of my head hard against the headrest behind me that was only at about neck height — if you can picture the snapping motion required for that. From that point on the ride was just throwing me everywhere. I felt as if I had to hold on with full strength or I’d be thrown out. At least that’s what it felt like, but I certainly had to brace to avoid possible injuries. This was far and away the wildest wild mouse ride I’ve ever ridden, easily taking the title away from Raton Loco at La Feria.

Then there is the Cyclone. An old-school woodie in every sense. This ride is just nuts. I rode it front row and back row, and both are just insane. Again (a little theme in the last couple of days), there isn’t great airtime here, but to say the ride feels out of control would be an understatement. The first two-thirds of this coaster are lunacy. The laterals throw you every which way, and a really bizarre feature is that the track in all the valleys is tilted 45 degrees. I’m not talking about banking on turns, but even straight sections. It’s a very strange sensation to be tilting all the time as you’re madly hurtling in every direction. This ride is pure insanity. The coaster and the park should be better known among enthusiasts. I believe Cyclone was widely held in high regard by enthusiasts decades ago, but now it is less known, most likely because the park is less often visited.

But the real star here is the park itself. It’s not just an old-school classic park. It’s a NOSTALGIA park. It’s a museum of amusement park beauty, keeper of the sacred flame of amusement park Americana of a bygone era. Everywhere you look there are buildings and especially signs that are pure gems of the past. This park just gives you a warm embrace of nostalgic love.











Photos can’t really do it justice.

And the train ride, which goes entirely around the park’s namesake lake, was, at sunset, the most amazing park trainride I’ve ever taken. Again, photos don’t do it justice, but here are some snaps:






For the first time on the trip, I felt that I’d really like to get a park shirt from this place. I asked: they don’t sell any merchandise at all. Perfect.

Because I ended up doing both parks in one day, today, Day Twenty-Five, was a rest day in Denver. But I spent a chunk of it dealing with issues by phone. The most prominent issue had to do with my upcoming visit to Portland, Oregon. I’m meeting a friend there and she asked about my arrival time, so I Googled the travel time from Wild Waves to my hotel, only to find out then and there that the Portland hotel I’d made reservations with had since gone bankrupt. Yikes. So a fair bit of sorting out to do today, and I was at least glad I had the spare time for it.

 

[FarleyFlavors]

I had been waiting for months to have some New Mexican cuisine, which is a blend of Mexican and Navajo traditions, with a tiny pinch of the Anglo thrown in. I knew I wouldn’t be in town long, so I decided to seek out Frontier Restaurant

Nice. Did you have any Hatch Green Chillies?

("Hatch Green Chillies" is the entirety of my knowledge of New Mexican cuisine).

 

[Matt N]

Great reports so far; you seem to be having a great trip! How many parks have you got left?

Also, if you want to ride an operational Arrow shuttle loop; fly to the UK when you’re able to, and go to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, because Revolution has thankfully been open on both of my visits there and shows no sign of being removed or closed any time soon!

 

[CanobieFan]

Lakeside is the jaammm!

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Days Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six: Colorado and Utah

The first half of the first of these two days was spent visiting Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. While I didn’t love the park quite as much as some CFers and others have said they love it, it is a unique place and I had a great time.

I did both of the cave tours and really enjoyed them (and the naturalist guides included all real information, unlike at Silver Dollar City where the cave tour guide had to undermine all the real information by trying to simultaneously pander to Creationists).

The Canyon Swing was a lot of fun, but I knew beforehand that it wouldn’t unnerve me in the slightest the way it does most people. But the Haunted Mine Shaft was a different story! Actually, I expected to be utterly terrified but instead I was just nervous. The most intense aspects of the ride are 1. It wasn’t clear at all to me when the drop was about to happen; 2. The actual drop was long and felt like a complete freefall, with my butt not touching the seat until we hit the bottom. When the drop was over and the ride slowly lifted up again, the shaft was lit and you could see how far you’d dropped, which seemed to me a surprisingly great distance.

I have never ridden a coaster like Cliffhanger, made by some obscure manufacturer. The view atop a cliff is great, and the coaster focuses on wild helices, but with one crazy element that would have to be called a dive loop. It’s not a standout, great ride, but it’s definitely intense for such a small coaster.

When I buckled myself into the alpine coaster, I asked the ride op if I was allowed to wait a few extra seconds because I knew the young girl in front of me would be going quite slowly. He immediately responded, “Oh, you don’t have to worry because everything is timed by machine and your ride can’t possibly be hindered.” I knew that was nonsense, but I’d never be a self-centered nuisance and argue the point. Sure enough, halfway down, I encountered the girl on the track in front of me, and the coaster automatically braked my cart all the way down. Oh, well. At least the first half of the ride was a really good alpine coaster, with little bumps actually providing airtime.

The next day and a half were a staggering experience, one that no words or photos can do justice. This was a visit to Arches National Park. I’d heard that the best-kept secret of the area was Utah State Road 128, which i drove from north to south. This was the most spectacular drive I have ever made. Only Yosemite could rival this. The massive stone formations everywhere were so much more majestic than I expected. Also, weather cooperated to enhance the magical feeling. Constant flashes of lightning, gusts of intense wind and dust devils, long curtains of rain visibly hanging in the sun, a lot of sunshine in between the clouds, and numerous rainbows, including a vibrant, full-sky, complete-arch double rainbow. After Route 128, I drove to Dead Horse Point to watch the sunset, something this place is famous for. After the downpours, the wet desert smelled intoxicating.

The next day, today, was the national park itself, and this is another staggering experience. I did two strenuous hikes, one to Delicate Arch, and the other in the Devil’s Garden to the Double O Arch. Again, the massive and otherworldly rock formations everywhere just blew me away.

Honestly, the experience made me wish I had squeezed more nature into my trip.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Nice. Did you have any Hatch Green Chillies?

("Hatch Green Chillies" is the entirety of my knowledge of New Mexican cuisine).

I don’t know enough to be familiar with that variety, but you can’t miss the fact that New Mexicans are obsessed with chilis. They’re on the license plates for one thing, and it’s said that the “state question,” one that is asked at any eatery, is “Red or green?” Apparently, if you want both, the response is “Make it Christmas” (i.e., red AND green).

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Great reports so far; you seem to be having a great trip! How many parks have you got left?

Also, if you want to ride an operational Arrow shuttle loop; fly to the UK when you’re able to, and go to Blackpool Pleasure Beach, because Revolution has thankfully been open on both of my visits there and shows no sign of being removed or closed any time soon!

Thanks. I’ve got eleven parks left. It’s going by so quickly!

I have wanted to get to Blackpool for decades, for many reasons, the Arrow shuttle loop being just one of them.

 

[FarleyFlavors]

I don’t know enough to be familiar with that variety, but you can’t miss the fact that New Mexicans are obsessed with chilis.

Indeed. Apparently the annual Hatch chilli harvest is a big thing for them.

unlike at Silver Dollar City where the cave tour guide had to undermine all the real information by trying to simultaneously pander to Creationists

Can you expand on that? I did the cave tour and don't remember this, but it's possible I'd zoned out at the time. Probably thinking about how quickly I could get back to Outlaw Run.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Can you expand on that? I did the cave tour and don't remember this, but it's possible I'd zoned out at the time. Probably thinking about how quickly I could get back to Outlaw Run.

In the Glenwood cave tours, they mention geological age throughout the narrative, frequently explaining how it took millions of years to form this and that.

I was greatly enjoying the Marvel Cave tour at SDC, but after a while I began to notice the guide was avoiding numbers — “took a vast amount of time,” “over the course of eons,” etc.

Then came a point about three-quarters of the way through when the guide stopped the group for a talk. First he demonstrated how dark it was with all the lights off (always an awesome moment in a cave tour). But then I distinctly remembered he became slightly nervous, correcting a term and stumbling over his words slightly, as if (my conjecture here) he was approaching a part of the mandated script that made him uncomfortable. “Scientists— uh, geologists say that this cave is millions of years old, but some say it’s 5000 years old. Whichever number you choose between those two, I think we can all agree that God did an amazing job in creating this cave.” (Cue warm approval from the group I was with.) When you make scientific reality a “choice,” it ceases to be an educational naturalist tour, and the last pandemic year in this country alone has shown so clearly what the dangers are of normalizing the dismissal of established science, and pretending incontrovertible issues of reality are about “choice.” Southern Missouri is a very distinct culture, and the park has a religious ethos in line with that, so this “choice” between scientific reality and fantasy was no coincidence. I’m sure they got complaints when guides mentioned the real age of the cave.

I love SDC so much, but this was not the only moment at the park that creeped me out.

 

[FarleyFlavors]

Blimey. It's fairly bizarre how much more religious the USA is compared to other first world countries.

This is wildly off-topic, sorry, but I was perusing this chart only a couple of days ago which demonstrates how much of an outlier they are. Over half of Americans pray to God every single day.

(As a side note, amongst the included countries, the UK has the lowest rate at 6%, if you discount those Godless heathens in China. Makes you proud to be British.)

 

[rob666]

Loving this off topic god discussion.
I would get in so much trouble in some southern US parks.
Could we have a few more specifics please, this is all new (and entertaining) to me.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Blimey. It's fairly bizarre how much more religious the USA is compared to other first world countries.
This is wildly off-topic, sorry, but I was persuing this chart only a couple of days ago which demonstrates how much of an outlier they are. Over half of Americans pray to God every single day.

(As a side note, amongst the included countries, the UK has the lowest rate at 6%, if you discount those Godless heathens in China. Makes you proud to be British.)

I’m not religious myself, but the problem here in my mind is not necessarily about religion per se. The vast majority of the religious world has long ago accepted the age of the planet and related issues like evolution. The culture wars in this country can make one think Christianity is opposed to evolution, but almost all Christian denominations have officially — by explicit proclamation — accepted evolution. It’s pretty much just fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam that are the holdouts.

Religious people can, of course, be rational thinkers who accept science — the majority are. But there is a relationship between the kind of brainwashed thinking that allows an individual to block out all the science on evolution and cling instead to bits of disinformation — and other current phenomena in the States. It’s the exact same mental training that allows people to block out the reality of a pandemic or the reality of a fully accredited election result. A certain kind of religion may have been part of the breeding for this phenomenon, but now it’s more like a cult of the willingly self-deluded, and it’s a huge threat to the future of the US democracy. … Which means it’s a threat to the world as well, unfortunately.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Loving this off topic god discussion.
I would get in so much trouble in some southern US parks.
Could we have a few more specifics please, this is all new (and entertaining) to me.

I don’t know if I have any ready anecdotes off the top of my head. But in terms of theming, this is why I prefer Dollywood to Silver Dollar City (just talking about theming now; they’re both great parks). In my experience, Dollywood is themed to the Great Smoky Mountains, to Dolly Parton’s music and personality, and to Dolly’s especially warm- and open-hearted version of Southern hospitality and culture. SDC is themed to the Ozarks of the late 1800s, jingoism, and Jesus.

 

[FarleyFlavors]

The culture wars in this country can make one think Christianity is opposed to evolution, but almost all Christian denominations have officially — by explicit proclamation — accepted evolution. It’s pretty much just fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam that are the holdouts.

All true, but the problem of course is that saying it's "just fundamentalist Christianity" that's the holdout makes it sound like a small section of the populace. A Gallup poll revealed that 41% of Americans describe themselves as "born again" or "evangelical". That's a scary number of people.

A certain kind of religion may have been part of the breeding for this phenomenon, but now it’s more like a cult of the willingly self-deluded, and it’s a huge threat to the future of the US democracy. … Which means it’s a threat to the world as well, unfortunately.

Yes, with this rise of the anti-rational, anti-intellectual and anti-science it sometimes seems like we're heading for the destruction of all the progress we've made since the Age of Enlightenment. It's depressing.

It's not confined to the States, mind. Michael Gove's statement during the Brexit campaign that "people in this country have had enough of experts" should have been enough to laugh him out of office. Thirty years or so ago it probably would have been.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

All true, but the problem of course is that saying it's "just fundamentalist Christianity" that's the holdout makes it sound like a small section of the populace. A Gallup poll revealed that 41% of Americans describe themselves as "born again" or "evangelical". That's a scary number of people.

Sadly, you speak the truth.

 

[MestnyiGeroi]

Days Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, and Twenty-Nine: Utah (primarily)

For much of today I was in a foul mood because of two issues that arose with the car rental company. But I’m trying to get stoic about it and concentrate on enjoying my vacation, so I will put it aside entirely for this report.

Day Twenty-Seven I had scheduled as a possible rest day if needed, and I took it as one.

Day Twenty-Eight was Salt Lake City’s Lagoon, a first-time visit. The park was full on a Saturday, so I wasn’t really able to marathon anything. But that was the only negative factor in an otherwise great day at a great park.

Colossus is a forceful Schwarzkopf that was fun.

I rode Wicked twice as I especially enjoyed that unique vertical launch.

The Roller Coaster I also rode twice, and for one of the ten oldest coasters in the world, this coaster is in great shape, having been reworked and retracked. The ride is smooth, and still offers airtime — slight floater in the front row over the tops, and significant air in the back row over the drops.

Cannibal was great fun. The drop itself is not as intense as I thought it might be, as it is heavily braked, and as the beyond-vertical drop actually engages slowing friction that the freefall of a vertical drop would not. Still the whole tower and drop sequence was great fun, and the coaster reminded me superficially of Kärnan. The (in)famous Lagoon roll really trolls the riders by taking the inversions very slowly. I rode Cannibal twice, front row both times, and came back for more at the end of the night, but the coaster was experiencing technical difficulties, and I had to get traveling as it was 9pm.

There was a little amusement park magic earlier in the day. I had known for months that Jet Star 2 does not take single riders ever, and as I’d be visiting the park solo, I’d be out of luck for that credit. I confirmed this with a ride op on the day and again he was very adamant. Oh, well, I thought, one credit missed. Then as I was waiting in line for Cannibal, I got to talking to a mother and son waiting in front of me. (Since I’ve done some US-bashing in this thread recently, let me add that I love the way that Americans are so relatively easy to talk with strangers. Even when I hit parks alone, I have conversations with people all day long.) As we chatted for half an hour in line, they soon asked and learned that I was traveling coast to coast doing parks. We ended up riding together in the same row, which was fun, and they very much wanted to know afterward what my reaction was to their local star coaster. Finally, as I was saying good-bye, they asked which coasters I still had left to do. I said just Jet Star, but I can’t go on it because they don’t allow single riders on it. Immediately, they volunteered to ride it with me, and they did so. I’m explaining all this because it was just the most seamless, natural, and shame-free experience of “borrowing” a stranger to get a cred. And the ride was wild as well.

I rode both dark rides, both water rides (real soakers!), and the vintage sky ride. While I would have liked a few more rounds on Cannibal, I left the place feeling I’d covered it well and really enjoyed this excellent park.

Today, Day Twenty-Nine, was the only day of the trip primarily devoted to traveling. But at the beginning of the day, I stopped by Yellowstone Bear World. As I mentioned previously on the forum, this place was on my radar because YouTuber ThemeParkCrazy did a video in which he calculated the ten remotest coasters in the US (the rides that have the greatest distance to the next closest coaster), and the Log Roller Coaster at Bear World was number one.



The park also has a petting zoo, and as I was petting an indifferent deer, a large potbelly pig the size of a full hog sneaked up behind me and rubbed against the back of my legs like an affectionate cat. I thought this was adorable until I realized the pig was covered in mud.

The fairly long drive north into Montana and then the Panhandle of Idaho was really spectacular in terms of natural beauty, as I tried hard to shake off my incongruously ugly mood over the car rental company!