July 1st: From the Devil's Den to Devil's Lake

Sunday, Ian recalled a local amusement park that he had gone to as a child, Conneaut Lake Park.  Founded in 1892 it was still in business and had free admission, you only had to pay for the rides.  Sounds like a plan.  So we cleaned and packed up our campsite, and headed over.  Got there about noon and were just about the only vehicles in the parking lot.  Hmmmm.  We wandered the midway and discovered that many of the rides were still in operation, well the ones that were still operable anyway.  I'm sure Conneaut Lake Park was a hopping place in its day, but its day was during the 60s, or maybe the 50s or perhaps even the 40s.  As Ian said, the place would have looked right if all the men visiting the park were wearing suits and hats and the women had dresses.

But we threw down our ten bucks for all day ride passes and tried our luck.  The kiddie rides were state-of-the-art, as long as the art was of the fifties.  The kid's mini roller coaster was fun but had a series of three hills that probably have caused whiplash injuries in more than onerider.  The remainder of the rides were basically all of the type that spin you around in a circle and they hope you throw up.  Fortunately for our crowd, we kept our cookies.  They even had a wooden Blue Streak coaster and it looked very reminiscent of the one at Cedar Point.  They even had thrown a few new boards at it in places where the termites seemed to have done the most damage.  Highlights for us were the Devils Den, a totally black fright house ride where you get whipped around in the dark, uncountable wads of bubble gum were stuck to the walls and creepy stuff hangs down to drag across your face; the Hansel and Gretel ride where you get spun until you're begging for the ride to stop; and the Carousel which was pretty nicely done, had a real air powered musical calliope and nice looking animals to ride.  They even had live pony rides  just like when I was a kid.  All in all it turned into a fun and cheap day and the five-almost-six-year-old had a ball.

 The drive back to Toledo was uneventful, well unless you consider the two enormous thunderstorms where limbs were down across the road, we were only able to drive about 40 and the visibility was only about 40 feet as being eventful.  Fortunately no incidents for us but glad we weren't out on Lake Erie as that rolled through.  Made it home Sunday evening to do laundry, visit my mother, renew acquaintances with the cats and repack for the start of our trip west.

So if Devil's Den was a ride at Conneaut Lake Park, where does Devil's Lake fit into the picture?  That was a Wisconsin State Park and Monday night's ultimate destination.  But more on that in the next post.