Ever since my last visit to Knott's Berry Farm in 2006 I have wanted to make a return visit. Over the last couple years I have wanted to go to their Coaster Solace event for coaster enthusiasts. Mainly, I have wanted to go so that I can get an early start to my seasonal riding. If you live in Kansas and want to ride coasters December-March you choices boil down to going to California, Florida, or Texas. Unfortunately, flying to Southern California is expensive where I live. It doesn't seem to matter whether I try to fly in to Long Beach, John Wayne, or LAX. Most of the time round trip tickets usually run about $300 a person. However, this year we have this great thing called a recession/depression and Valerie and I were able to fly out to John Wayne for less than $400 round trip. We also already had Cedar Fair Platinum passes so our tickets to the event were only $25 a person.

Valerie and I had been meaning to go out to Worlds of Fun for Halloween Haunt this year, but we hadn't had a chance because we had been busy with our own Halloween festivities. We also needed to go out there to renew our season passes for 2009 while they were still discounted. We got to the park around 3pm and our first stop was to pay for our renewals and get them processed. This took less than 5 minutes and it was much easier than having to deal with it at the beginning of next season. Once the administrative part of the visit was taken care of we headed over to Lore of the Vampire. Lore is the only "Extreme Haunt" open on Sundays. In the past this had been one of my favorites, but I was a little disappointed with it this year.

One of the parks Valerie and I had been meaning to visit for a while was Elitch Gardens. Valerie works at an independent hotel, and one of the properties is about 20 minutes from Elitch Gardens. Each year the managers go out to the owner's home in Breckenridge to set the budget for the next year so they don't have to worry about to dealing with other distractions. I wasn't able to go out there with her last year because of scheduling conflicts, but this year we were able to suggest some dates that would work best for us. I flew out last Friday after I was done with work and met up with her later that evening. After eating a late dinner we decided not to set a definitive time that we wanted to be at the park since we both wanted to sleep in.

First I want to apologize for the delay between entries. I haven't felt like writing much lately, and sitting out on the back deck has made for a good diversion. Three weeks ago Valerie and I took a trip up to Altoona, IA (just outside of Des Moines) to go to Adventureland Park. We left town on a Friday evening after work, and after a hitting some construction, going through a few detours, and stopping for food we made it to our hotel around 10pm. The most exciting thing within sight of the hotel was a Casey's General store so we just watched TV that evening. The next morning I got up around 9am with the intent of getting to the park when they opened at 10am. But, after I looked out the hotel window all I saw was dense fog. The entire town was covered and visibility was maybe 100 yards. Since the fog was going to make any pictures I would take look bad, we decided to take our time getting ready. We ended up getting to the park around 11am at which point the Sun was out and the fog had burned off.