Road Trip to California: Day 1-St. Louis

Blue Slushie, Check.

Be Sure to Check Out My Previous Post: A Day at Purdue!

With Blue Slushie in the cup holder, and Howard stern on the radio, I started my 2100 mile drive to
California. The drive would be broken down into 3 days, each averaging 12 hours of time on the road including pit stops.

Day 1 of the drive took me through Illinois, Missouri and ending in Abilene, Kansas.

St. Louis Arch

My First stop in downtown St. Louis, MO at the Arch. It is a beautiful monument that truly towers over the city and dominates the landscape as you drive in. It is located in a large grassy park overlooking the Mississippi river. When I was there, the line to go to the top was at least an hour long, and I didn't have that sort of time, so I took some photos, enjoyed the beauty of the arch and got back on the road.

Now with a long few days ahead of me, I made sure to try to have at least some fun out of the car, and Six Flags St Louis was the highlight of Day 1. It was a pretty hot and sticky day, so the majority of the guests were there for the water park, so the lines for all of the coasters were pretty short. Most of the rides were standard, and not necessarily noteworthy. I rode all of the coasters for credit toward my coaster count. Today's count was 9. As some rides were just standard coasters, I will just highlight my few favorites in the park.

Batman: The Ride.

First was Batman: The Ride. It is the standards Six Flags Batman Clone, except it exits the station
from the left instead of the right. The rest of the layout was essentially the same, but the landscape was a lot more bare than what it is at other parks. Still a great ride, and back row is still my favorite spot on this ride.

American Thunder with Got-2-B-Glued Decals

Wooden coasters are always a thing of beauty and their construction and appearance can always be appreciated wherever you are. Six Flags St. Louis has 3 wooden coasters: Screamin' Eagle, The Boss, and American Thunder. Screamin' Eagle was a nice hilly ride, with lots of bunny hills both out and back, rode on the front to get a view of the surrounding area (nice green hillsides). The Boss was extremely overrated. It had a lot of elements that should lead it to be a very exciting coaster, however the trains that it used were extremely rough and led me to actually sit down and recover after just 2 rides. I think with a re-tracking and newer trains this could prove to be a much better coaster, but for now, i would say avoid it.

American Thunder however was fantastic. Using my favorite Millennium Flyer trains, it provided both a very smooth ride and plenty of airtime. My only complaint was that it was too short!! Six Flags also has a very interesting collection of advertisers throughout the park, and this coaster train was shrink wrapped with Got-2-B-Glued adverts. Nothing says roller coasters like good hair gel.

I also took a ride on Pandemonium, a spinny car coaster. These coasters are much smaller in size and often resemble a carnival style "Wild Mouse" ride. Essentially, the trains are only 1 car long, and after ascending the first lift hill, the cars are able to spin freely based on the weight distribution of the riders as you travel the track, leading to a different ride experience every time you ride. Despite all the spinny, there is not much nausea that accompanies this ride, and leads to a very fun ride experience.

At the end of the day, I took a ride (OK more like 4 rides) aboard Mr. Freeze Reverse Blast! This

Mr. Freeze, Reverse Blast!

LIM launched coaster, sends rides through an inside top hat, and up a 218' vertical tower all in reverse at 70 mph, before  plummeting back to the earth and flying through the elements once more going forwards back to the station. This is a great launched coaster and the theming was done very well inside the launch building. However the coolest part of this ride was its "side-to-side" loading station. Essentially there are 2 separate loading tracks, that each slide towards the center of the building to line up with the main track, and then launch from there. This allows one train of riders to be experiencing the ride, while the other train is loading new passengers, which is not usually found on non-complete circuit launched coasters. Also fitting with the "Mr. Freeze" theming, the show/launch building was chilled quite nicely and made for a nice bit of relief on a hot summer day. Check out this video to see what I mean about the cool loading station.

Well 4 hours and 9 new coasters later, it was time to leave Six Flags and continue on down the road. It was a nice break in my day, and made the rest of my day of driving much nicer. Today also marked 100 hours of driving so far this summer, which was pretty cool.

100 Hours in the car so far!

Didn't get enough photos here? Then check out all the photos from the 3 day drive in the #LyfInFocus-Indiana To California Album!

Be sure to check out my next post:
Road Trip to California: Day 2- Kansas and Colorado!

A Day at Purdue!

Be sure to check out my previous post: Indiana Beach!

After spending the better portion of the last 5 years at Purdue University, it has truly become a second home to me. During my time there I made friendships that I'm sure will last a lifetime.

After Indiana Beach, I made the very short 30 minute trip back to Lafayette to stay the night before spending my day in Boilermaker nation. My day started with a car wash at the Jungle Themed drive through Car wash to give Fiona (my car) a good scrub down. This was her first wash all summer so it was much needed. After the wash, it was off to what turned out to be one of my favorite places on campus: Harry's Chocolate Shop.

Vanilla White Russian at Harry's

So Its not really a chocolate shop (I don't even know if they sell anything with chocolate), but an awesome and historic bar at Purdue. Opened in 1919 as a soda fountain, they served the students of Purdue university for mainly lunchtime items. It later acquired a liquor license and began its service as the common day bar. Purdue lore states that it was a speak-easy during prohibition and the hatch in the floor used to be covered by the counter and was the passage to the underground bar. That hatch now leads to the liquor storage area. So whether that story is true or not will remain with those students who visited during that controversial age. In any case, they are home to some great memorabilia and some of the best drinks (with a debatably higher alcohol content) around. Whether it be a Green Dragon or a Baltimore Zoo, everyone can find their drink of choice. Personally?? I like a Vanilla White Russian.

Megan with Lanie

During my time as an RA on campus, almost as a joke I started having my 1 on 1's with my staff resident over lunch at Harry's, when she said yes, and we both realized how good the food was, it turned into a weekly occurrence. About a month into the year we became regulars and had a the same waitress every week that we built a great relationship with. So needless to say, upon my day at Purdue I couldn't miss out on this weekly tradition.

Megan with Bucky!

After my time at Harry's I headed back to my friend Megan'sapartment to meet her dog, a Lab named Lanie! Being a little animal deprived over the summer, I may have been a bit more excited to play ball that Lanie was, but nonetheless we had a great time. After the traditional photo with Bucky, I parted ways and headed out to visit my friend Chris and catch up on the past month, and of course get some new EDM tunes for the road.

Mary with Bucky!

That night, I stayed at my friend Alexis and Mary's apartment, surprising Mary for her birthday which was 2 days later. Staying up late and catching up with friends, made it seem like yesterday that I was spending all of my days at Purdue.

Pam and Mary with Bucky!

The next morning before heading out on the road for my 3 day trip to 
California, I met 2 friends and office clerks Pam and Mary for breakfast at Panera. It was again good to catch up with people that I had seen daily for so long.


Be sure to check out my next post: Road Trip to California-Part 1: St Louis!

Indiana Beach

Be Sure to check out my last post: A Few Days in Illinois!

Well hey there! Its been a few weeks since I've posted here, but don't worry, I'm back!

Welcome to Indiana Beach!

Located in scenic Monticello, Indiana, Indiana Beach has been a
Hoosier family destination since
1926. The amusement resort, whose slogan is "There's more than in Indiana", is located in a peninsula on Lake Shafer. From the moment you walk onto the wooden suspension bridge and see the hills of the roller coasters out over the lake, you know you're in for a different experience.

On the suspension bridge

Indiana Beach takes a step back from the bigger corporate run amusement parks and has a closer friendlier feel to it. Fences are chest high, concessions have wider more open windows, and there is minimal "restricted areas" to maximize the amount of sidewalk space for the guests. The coasters rumbled by with the screams of joy, and the traditional spin rides stretching out over the side of the boardwalk made for a truly hard to match atmosphere. If you haven't gotten it yet, I

Tacos!

really loved Indiana Beach. Sure there are not massive record breaking coasters, or high gloss buildings, but what it didn't lack was a fun and welcoming feel to it.

Our first stop was the "World Famous Taco" stand, where these cheap tacos, actually proved to be pretty delicious. With a freshly fried shell, some meat, lettuce, cheese and salsa, I was pleasantly surprised!

Next stop was a unique "attraction". Feed the Fish. OK, there wasn't a big line or some big show, but it was certainly unique to pay $0.50 to feed these incredibly hungry fish some pellets out of your ice cream cone. Check out the video of them jumping all over themselves.

Pinball Room

One of the more exciting things at Indiana Beach, apart from the coaster lineup, was the arcade games! I'm a bit of a pinball fanatic, and the amazing selection of pinball machines was hard to match elsewhere. They also had a full room just for Skeeball (which for some unexplainable reason I'm really good at). And an awesome and rare game called Fascination (Check out details on Wikipedia).

Steel Hawg Coaster

Another unique attraction was Dr. Frankenstein's Haunted Castle, voted world's best walk through attraction in 2008. While there are no scare actors inside, there are a lot of great scares inside and the hard work of the Indiana Beach staff on the upkeep of the attraction truly makes it a great experience. There is a $3.50 charge for it as it is not included with the wristbands, but it is definitely worth it.
While Indiana Beach does have a great lineup of wood coasters and

Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain

some unique steel coasters which may leave you either asking for a chiropractor or jumping back in line for more, they by no means steal the show. As you walk around the park, there are several other things to keep you busy throughout the day. From the $10 unlimited ride zip line, the water ski/Dive show, and water park, there is something to keep everyone in the family happy.


Now for a break in the day, the trip isn't complete without a visit to the "Skyroom and Roof Garden Lounge". With reasonable food prices and a great beer selection (and air conditioning for those hot and humid Indiana Summer days), its the classiest place in the park. The large glass windows provide for great views out over the park, as well as the outdoor Roof Garden Lounge has live entertainment on most evenings.

At Night on the Skyride

While watching the fireworks out over the lake, riding the Double Shot at the same time, its

An Interesting Crowd at the Beach

needless to say, I ended my first trip to Indiana Beach on a high note and cant wait to return again.


Check out some more photos of my trip to Indiana Beach over in the #LyfInFocus-Indiana Beach Album.

Be Sure to Check out my next post: A Day at Purdue!