Berkshire Roller Coaster Ride

We started off today with finally getting to eat at Bob's Country Kitchen in Lanesborough. Boy, were they busy! It was hard to find a place to park at quarter of 10. It was worth it when we got in, though. They make great breakfasts. They're a lovely little blonde wood building with photos of sunsets on the lake, local history, gingham curtains on the windows, and for some reason, artwork of the Disney Snow White and the seven dwarfs on the wall near the entrance. Lauren had white toast, a bacon omelette, and hash browns. I had fluffy berry pancakes with perfectly crispy bacon.

It was only about a 20 minute drive from there to Jiminy Peak Resorts. Their Adventure Park features a twisty fiberglass Alpine Slide and a roller coaster you can control how fast or slow the ride is. After we bought our tickets and signed a waiver, we passed the main buildings and went straight for the roller coaster. You sit on a gray vehicle and push heavy levers to control the speed. It takes a while to get all the way up the mountain...but when you do, whoosh! You go around and around and over small hills down the track. It's too much fun. 

After two runs, we took a ski lift further up the hill. The view from the lift was genuinely stunning. The weather couldn't have been more perfect for early October. Radiant blue sky peeked through green and gold trees; rusts and browns could be seen on the horizon. Ferns waving under us in the breeze, silvery green pine trees and falling gold leaves gave off a wonderful, earthy scent.

The Alpine Slide is a bit less complicated than the roller coaster. You get a slide from the conveyor belt near the ski lift, you drag it to the slide's starting point, you start down when you're given the go. There's an expert's lane for those who want to go fast, and a beginner's lane for newcomers, younger kids, and people who aren't up to it. I took the beginner's lane because it's been a while, but I think I should have gone on the expert's. I loved the feeling of whooshing down the hill, skidding around turns, slowing for hills...but I'd also have to slow down for people who really were scared, or who wanted to chat with their friends or enjoy the scenery. (They can do that on the ski lift!)

We spent the next two hours riding both rides. I have to admit, I enjoyed the slide slightly more. It's more nerve-wracking, and accidents and scraped arms and legs have been known to happen. The ride is also longer, and it's exhilarating, flying down that hill! The roller coaster is fun too, but it's a shorter ride, and you don't control it to quite the level that you do the slide. 

It was quarter after 1 when we finally decided we'd had enough and broke for lunch. We ate at Christiansen's Tavern, a beautiful dark wood building with hand-made 19th century farming implements hanging on the walls. I watched pre-season hockey in the lobby while we were waiting to be seated. (Bruins killed the Rangers 4-1. Flyers beat the Devils too, 4-3.) 

We ate outside on the patio...which, despite the gorgeous day, may not have been the brightest idea. Two remarkably persistent yellow and black wasps kept attacking our Diet Cokes! We had to cover them with the plates for our fried green beans to keep them away, and even then, they buzzed around. It's a shame, because the food was delicious. In addition to the crispy, unique green beans, Lauren had grilled cheese with tomato and avocado, and I had a mile-high turkey club sandwich. I suspect the thick chips that came with them were hand-made.

After lunch, we drove back into Vermont. This time, we ended up at Pastime Pinball in Manchester. This is one of my favorite places we go when I visit. This working pinball arcade and museum features more than 60 pinball machines ranging from the 1947 Humpty Dumpty (which is so old, the balls don't even fall down a slot; they just drop below) to an Elton John Superstar-themed console with a massive LED screen from two years ago. There's a lot of rarities you don't expect to see at a pinball museum too, like The Shadow, a pinball version of the flop 1994 film version of the pulp and radio character, a older Elton John console released after the success of Tommy, Captain Fantastic, the first of three consoles made around Elvira, and one for World Cup Soccer from 1994.

I played for an hour, including grabbing a Sparkling Ice from the snack stand upstairs, before moving on. Lauren remained with the pinball machines while I headed to the Northshire Bookstore across the street. This gorgeous old independent store is housed in an old restored inn...and as such, is something of a maze. It took me a while, but I finally found the section with the used and rare books. Picked up two books here, one from a series that I'd hoped had more titles, one I've wanted for a while:

Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter by Richard Barrios (who also wrote the wonderful book on early talkie musicals A Song In the Dark)

Reel Murder by Mary Kennedy

We met back again at Pasttime Pinball. Lauren led me down the street to a small shopping center. Sushi Boat is a charming little hole-in-the wall that sells sushi and Japanese food. I'm not a fan of sushi, but I was willing to try something lighter after two carb-heavy meals earlier. I had a tasty miso soup, a salad made with real greens, California rolls with seafood, and cucumber rolls. Sushi's still not my favorite thing in the universe, but I did like the California rolls better than the cucumber rolls. Lauren had a sampler plate of sushi. She ate the whole thing and one of my cucumber rolls. 

Headed home after that. Lauren did get turned around a bit in the dark, but at least we ran into no traffic anywhere tonight. We got in by 8, and I got organized. Finished the night with tonight's Match Game marathon. Tonight's episodes were random ones that are favorites of the channel's owner, like the one from 1976 with the pretty Asian contestant and the one who was extremely tan, to the point where she may have been a little too brown. Gene discusses a magical musical moment in the short-lived Broadway musical version of Charley and Algernon in a syndicated episode. Johnny Brown of Good Times was an adorable delight during his one week in 1975.

You'll never know what you'll see next in this random medley of delights!

Match Game Saturday Classics - Match Game Randomized - Featuring Specialty Episodes & 'Frozen Bananas'

And I spent a good chunk of the time when I got back getting my luggage organized...because tomorrow, I'm going home. But first, Lauren and I will be doing one last breakfast together. 

You Spin Me Round and Round

I couldn't believe how gorgeous it was when we headed out this morning. The sky was a searing blue, the clouds were gone, and the breeze felt great. It was just barely in the lower 80's. There couldn't have been a nicer day for a ride around Lauren's area, starting at a near-by Barnes and Noble. This was smaller than the other ones we'd explored, with no toys or electronic media area. Lauren didn't find anything she wanted. I looked at the Star Wars paperbacks, but I ultimately just grabbed a journal.

We had an early lunch at a rustic branch of a local coffee shop chain called Juice and Java. Lauren knows the owners, and she knows they make some of the best sandwiches in the Berkshires. We got there early enough for me to order off the breakfast menu. I had an egg wrap with peppers, cheese, and salsa and a Dasani Mixed Berry Sparkling Water. She had turkey avocado panini and a Dr. Pepper.

It was a glorious day for mini-golf. There's a course just outside the Berkshire Mall. Lauren grabbed a purple ball, I grabbed a red ball, and we played through all 18 holes. The course is small but wonderfully cheesy - Lauren said she played it as a kid. There's all kinds of typical traps that still work, like tiny houses with narrow openings that balls get stuck in (it happened to both of us) and fiberglass bears you have to navigate your ball around. There was a family - a mom, a dad, a pre-teen girl, and a grandma and grandpa - ahead of us. They were taking forever and finally let us skip ahead. The "19th hole" is a pinball-type game that allows you to either get points off your score or a free game. We each got three points off. Even with that, I still beat Lauren by 1 point in a very close game.

Since we were in the area, we swung over to the Berkshire Mall proper, first hitting their Target. This time, we both made scores. They didn't have the new Ever After High signatures (regular characters), but they did have most of the Epic Winter snow-themed dolls. I went with one of only two new characters introduced in that line, the limited edition Crystal Winter. Couldn't resist my favorite toasted coconut-covered marshmallows anymore. Lauren found Christmas presents for her Dad.

Unlike the other malls we've visited this week, the Berkshire Mall is largely dead. It's only half-full, mainly with mall mainstays like Bath and Body Works and Jay Street Video Store. I didn't get anything at the latter. Lauren picked up a Wii U game and a Sega Genesis port of several popular 80's arcade games she could play on her Retron (a machine that can play up to 5 older game systems in some newer versions).

The mall does have one new tenant - Toy Giant, a toy store that mixes in toys from smaller companies with a few selected items from larger corporations. It's a lot like Happy Hippo Toys in Haddonfield, or Toy Genius at the Cherry Hill Mall. I didn't find anything, but Lauren picked up an action figure of popular WWE wrestler "Uncle" Dean Ambrose for her dad.

Started out to Jiminy Peak around 2:30. Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort is mostly a ski lodge...but in the summer, it has a few unique rides. We skipped the swing and the trampoline in favor of our two favorites, the Mountain Coaster and the Alpine Super Slide. The really cool thing about these rides is you control how fast and slow they go via levers in the cars. You have more control over the speed of the slide car, but there's less around you. The slide is a fiberglass course, and it's longer and twistier. Lauren says she's gotten burns several times, and wipe outs have been known to happen.

You have to take a chair lift to get to the start of the slide, which is a nice ride in and of itself. The lifts pass over the slide, giving you a great view of people going down. At least two little kids waved at us as they whooshed away. (The girl with the Afro curls and sweet smile was adorable!) You get an amazing view of the mountainside and hiking trails right before you arrive at the top, too.

Our last chair lift ride of the day was marred by a family with a grade-school age girl who kept bouncing her legs up and down. Every time she bounced, so did the cable...and us with it. Instead of telling her to stop, her mother and her father and older sibling in the car ahead of us egged her on, and even joined in. Please, if the rules say "don't swing your legs on the lift," remember the people behind you and don't swing your legs on the lift...or encourage others to.

The Mountain Coaster is shorter and you can't control the speed as well, but it does have its virtues. It's a sturdy steel track that doesn't feel quite as wild as the slide; the car has a belt and shoulder harness. It can still go fast, though! While it does rattle, it mostly goes around. There's a few up and down hills, but no steep hills (except the first ascent), no huge drops, and no loops. Beats the heck out of the Comet for non-coaster people like Lauren and me.

(It actually reminds me a little of the Flitzer at Morey's Pier in Wildwood. That was one of the only roller coasters I'd ride on the boardwalk as a kid. In fact, it was my first coaster. Mom, who loves roller coasters, talked me onto it and rode with me. While you don't control the ride, the track is very similar, all turns, no dips, hills, or loops.)

(Oh, and incidentally, Lauren and I were both fine when we finished. No burns or wipe outs here today, or even pulled muscles.)

We went around on each ride five times before we finally decided it was time for dinner. Lauren drove us back down to the Berkshire Mall. This time, we hit their one and only sit-down restaurant, The Garden. The Garden is pretty much a smaller, slightly cheaper version of Applebee's, a neighborhood bar and grill. They have great sandwiches and pretty decent Mexcian, too. Lauren had a spinach and mushroom quesadilla. I had a Monte Cristo with raspberry jam and fries. My Monte Cristo was very filling, and very different from the open-faced sandwiches that Monte Cristos usually are in New Jersey. This had the same turkey, ham, and Swiss Cheese filling on French toast, but the sandwiches were fried before being sliced. Wow. They were so decadent and delicious, very yummy with the jam. They were also very thick, too much for me to finish. Lauren finished her quesadilla, though, possibly the first time she ate more than I did!

Full and tired from our rides, we just headed home after dinner. I went in the shower. Lauren watched the Toronto Blue Jays-Cleveland Indians game with her parents. (Cleveland won, BTW, according to Lauren.) When I got out, I had cookies, we both had water, and we went online.

Our last outing will be out and about in the area again to check out a couple of promising yard sales, then up through the wilds of Vermont to visit the Vermont Country Store.

Oh, and meet Crystal Winter! The daughter of the Snow Queen and King is happy with being in charge of the winter, partially because it allows her to play her favorite sport - ice hockey! She's the star of Epic Winter, the newest Ever After High special that has the kids searching for a rose to end eternal winter at the high school.

Down at Great Escape Park

We pulled out of the garage around 9:30 again, this time headed to Six Flags Great Escape in Lake George, New York. After a stop for gas, we made our way back into the upstate New York countryside...but this time, we went beyond Albany and Troy, mostly along the Interstate. While the clouds were in and out, there was a nice, cool wind, and it wasn't nearly as hot as it was yesterday or as it's been in South Jersey.

Finally made it to Six Flags around 11:30-noon. Getting into the parking lot was easy, much easier than it was the last time we went in 2009. They just needed to ring the bar on the parking voucher Lauren got online. We left the car in the half-full Dove parking lot (all the parking lots in Great Escape are named for Mars candies) and strolled across the pedestrian bridge to the main entrance.

Getting in the park was a LOT more complicated. They now have metal detectors in front of the main entrance. I know it's necessary these days, but it was a pain. I had to take off my gold necklace, and it got tangled in the cup. Good thing Lauren's more patient with this sort of thing than I am.

Once we made it in the park (and hit the bathroom), our first stop was the Magic Carpet Sky Ride in the Storybook Town area. It's your basic Sky Ride that glides over the Storybook Town and Hot Rod USA areas, but it did give us an idea of what rides were there now. We noticed Thunder Alley, Great Escape's 50's-themed version of Disneyland's Tomorrowland Raceway, was now hidden behind the brand-new Greezed Lightnin' "Fireball" endless loop coaster and seemed to have been spruced up sometime in the last few years. We'd take in that one later. The Swan Boats and park railroad (now the Storybook Town Railroad) were still there, too.

We wandered through Storybook Town and Timbertown Station (the more generic North-Woods-themed replacement for the Looney Tunes kids area) to take in two walk-through rides. The Alice In Wonderand walk-through started in a black-lit, green striped tunnel and went past a shrinking Alice drinking her "drink me" bottle into the Tulgey Wood. This seemed to consist mostly of bright-colored, gigantic snails and huge polka-dot mushrooms. We past the Caterpillar and his hookah, a wooden house featuring Mad Tea Party figurines, and the Queen of Hearts and her court. (The Queen was much too pretty to be screaming at anybody.)

Alice and the Jungle Rope Bridge Walk-Through date back to when the park was entirely called Storybook Town in the 50's and 60's. The small Bugs-and-Daffy figures we saw on the walk-through in 2009 had been replaced by nifty fiberglass jungle animals, including a huge hippo, an elephant, a tiger family, and a very realistic snake that bares his fangs in greeting you as you enter. The rope bridges remain the same - wobbly! We were still wobbling when we bounced off.

(My friend Linda Young, who went to Storybook Town in the 60's and 70's, will be happy to know the rope bridge walk through is still very popular. The mom in front of us mentioned her two toddlers had tugged her onto the walk-through at least 10 times this summer.)

It must have taken a half-hour to find the Comet, Great Escape's popular wooden coaster. It's got some interesting history, too. It was built in 1927 and spent 40 years in a park in Ontario before it shut down in 1989. It was moved to Great Escape in 1994. Lauren wanted to try at least one roller coaster and thought this wouldn't be so bad. I hadn't ridden a wooden coaster since Keefe talked me into going on The Great White in Wildwood in 2002. I hadn't been thrilled at the time, but I survived. How bad could it be?

I don't know. I kept my eyes closed most of the ride. The moment it went up and over that first steep hill, it was too much for me. I screamed at Lauren twice before I settled for clenching my teeth and holding on for dear life. It went around corners like a wild horse, bucking and rattling on the track. I swear I felt myself fly up in the seat at several points. I read online that this is considered to be one of the best wooden coasters in the world. Maybe some coaster fans wouldn't have a problem with it, but it was too crazy for us! We were wobbling more than on the rope bridges when we stumbled down the exit queue.

Lauren stopped to check our photos on the ride at the kiosk to one side of the queue. I didn't join her. I knew what I looked like on that ride - terrified! After she changed her mind about the photos, we decided we needed something a tad more grounded and easier on our stomachs. We strolled past Splashwater Kingdom, Great Escape's outdoor water park, and the wacky-colored Dr. Seuss-esque kiddie area Kidzopolis to the Fest Area.

The Fest Area is the home of Lauren's favorite ride, the Raging River. You ride in a large tube with five other people, passing under and through waterfalls, sprays, and jets of water (often shot by people on the path going by the rapids). We did it twice, once before lunch, and once afterwards, and had a lot of fun. The first time, we rode with three young-teen girls who giggled and laughed and screamed and compared one of their teachers to a chicken leg. The second time, we went with a mom, a grandmom, and a younger girl.

We had lunch between rides. The Alpine Fest Haus was a fast-food style eatery just a little down the road from the Raging River. We settled for simple chicken salads. Lauren bought a souvenir refillable cup. I thought they were way too much and went with a 12-oz Poweraide.

The second go-around on the Raging River left us both thoroughly drenched. We played games in the Fest Area while we were dripping. Alas, I just could not win. Lauren beat me at Whac-a-Mole and got a rather odd hat shaped like a purple and yellow squid. She won the skee ball horse race game and got a ladybug to give to her mom, who collects ladybug items.

We took in some less wild rides while we dried off. The Storybook Town Train took us past fiberglass versions of Hickory Dickory Dock and Humpty Dumpty, as well as "Popo the Purple Cow" (who looked far more like a friendly dragon or dinosaur) and ruined carriages and antique cars that represented Ghost Town. (And scared the dickens out of the two toddlers sitting in front of us, who squeals that they kept seeing ghosts around every corner.) The Swan Boats took a similar route on the River Dee, passing Popo and Humpty as well as several flocks of very real ducks looking for a snack.

Thunder Alley is my favorite ride at Great Escape. It had been cleaned up considerably since we were last there. In fact, the whole area had been themed around it, now made to look like a small town in the 50's and now called Hot Rod USA. The little cars sported bright new paint jobs. I rode in a black hod rod with "flames" on the front. The Technicolor tulips in the landscaping had been joined by vintage "billboards" for Storybook Town and Coca Cola. The genuine 50's and 60's building on the street across from Great Escape added to the atmosphere, including a neon sign with a giant chicken perched on the top. (Also, unless they're riding with a little kid, people can only ride one at a time in a car now.)

Had a small dinner at a pizza booth near Thunder Alley. I had cheesebread - cheese covered flat bread - and Lauren had a slice of pepperoni. After that, we returned to the International Village to go shopping. She bought a giant yellow neon bear with Six Flags Great Escape embroidered on its paws. I found the most adorable fuzzy pink hedgehog with a heart-shaped gemstone collar and embroidered heart cheeks. Her name is Miss Hedgie, and she's a sweet southern belle. I also grabbed a metal Six Flags key chain.

We were both worn out, and I pulled a muscle in my right leg climbing out of the Swan Boats and was sore as heck. It was time to go home. We headed out around 6, stopping briefly at Rite Aid for Lauren to try to find what her dad asked her to get yesterday. (She didn't.)

Finally got in around 8:30-ish. I showed Mr. and Mrs. Miller my hedgehog, then hit the shower. We're now finishing up tonight's chat session. Tomorrow, we're going to take in another mall, this one in the opposite direction in Eastern Massachusetts.