Current Mood:
Jammin’
You’re probably wondering where we’ve been, well you might know if you know us in real life, or keep up with us on Facebook, read Brad’s Twitter, or do the MySpace thing. For those that keep up with us on the blogging circuit we’ve been up at the Double JJ Ranch for 3 days of unenending fun this past weekend! We decided that since we’ve never really taken Clare anywhere on vacation, and we had some money stashed in the savings, we’d go somewhere for a fun start to her Spring Break. The options were Double JJ, Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City, or Frankenmuth as far was indoor water park hotels within a reasonable driving distance were concerned. Since Double JJ was the closest and the cheapest it’s where we headed. The rate for 2 nights, including water park admission all 3 days was fairly reasonable at $376. I wish I had asked when I made the reservations, but the suites that we stayed in accross from the water park lodge had kitchenette’s with dishes, silverwear, pots & pans, a stove, and fridge. It would have saved us money on dining out at the 3 choices we had for dinner on the property. Don’t get me wrong the food was good at the 2 places we went to for dinner (the steak house, and the Spaghetti place), and it was fairly reasonably priced for being your only choices being out in the middle of nowhere. We did however save on breakfast by buying pancake mix, syrup, yogurt, bottles of juice, and microwave popcorn (our evening snack) at their little Feed store that had minimal groceries.
We left Friday afternoon, and headed up to Rothburry (or the address was New Era) - who knows it was in the middle of nowhere just North of Muskegon. Getting to the ranch was relatively easy and took us just over an hour from home, however the ranch is spread out with 3 different entrances, and it was a bit tricky figuring out which one to take. We arrived, checked in, found the suites accross the parking lot. Here’s my tip if you ever go there. They tell you about an indoor parking garage - don’t waste your time trying to wiggle in there if you have a large car/van. I pulled into one garage, the door closed behind me, and every which way I wiggled I could not pull into one of the 2 spots that were open out of the total 12 slots, so we parked outside. The suites are quite nice, and relatively new. You walk into the kitchenette area, complete with a table and chairs, then there’s a couple of chairs, a couch that pulls out into a queen size bed, and a flat screen tv above the fire place. Each room has a little balcony too. There is also a master bedroom with a fire place, a smaller flat screen tv, a king size bed, and it was completed with a jacuzzi tub - love those tubs! The bathroom was nice, and had a large shower.
We went to dinner at the Sundance steakhouse, and the food was good. After dinner Clare begged to go to the water park, but oh the choices we had. They had a movie on a blow up screen (Toy Story one night, and Robots the next), with an ice cream social, or we could go to the water park for an hour before it closed. Brad really didn’t want to go anywhere, but I figured this was her vacation and with no bed time rules, it was her choice. Off to the water park we went. I have never been so tired of floating in a Lazy River in my life! It was all she wanted to do, and I had to do it with her because she was too small to fit in a single tube without almost falling through. So, we got a double tube so I could help her out. Here’s my tip for tube floating. I put the tube over my head so my feet were underneath, I used my arms to support my upper body, and then I could put my feet in the 2nd hole from underneath so Clare could sit on my legs if need be. She was also fond of sitting on the middle as seen in the above pic. This way she could have movement room and I could control the raft below with my feet so I didn’t have to go through too many of the fountains from overhead!
On Saturday we made breakfast, headed to the water park with Brad, ate some lunch, had some down time in our room, then decided to head to the Back Fourty where they have a petting farm area and a horse to ride. The petting zoo was not that great, but Clare had fun feeding the animals the treats we bought for $1 at the General Store. They had goats, donkeys, cows, chickens, an alpaca, and rabbits. They also had the nicest horse available for those kids not old enough to do trail rides to ride around the ring once. I am fairly familiar with horses after working at the tree farm in Ruby (one of my many jobs was to walk the horses in the winter time, as well as saddle them up for the pony ring during our Fall season), so I knew she’d be okay. She saddled up, and rode like a pro as I led her around. She did however make me a little nervous when she decided it’d be cool to go no hands as she tried to do a YEE HAW ride em’ cowgirl.
We came back after wandering around for a bit to have some ice cream before heading back to our room. Of course more begging and pleading to go back to the waterpark ensued, so I made a deal with Brad to order pizza from one of the restaurants that delivered so it’d be there when Clare & I got back from the waterpark. This time I got Clare to go into the hot tub with me, and of course she loved it. I think it’s because it was so warm, and it was deep enough (up to her upper chest) that she could kinda swim around basically in bath water. That and it was super cool to her because you could go through a little flap and be outside. More floating in the lazy river was one of our last activities of the evening before heading back for a late dinner in our room.
On Sunday, even though we had to check out we still had access to the water park all day. So we loaded up the car with the exception of our change of clothing, checked out, and then hit the water park one last time before heading home. This morning I had to hear some whining about wanting to go back to the water park, but other than that this weekend was exceptionally fun. I think if I had to give a review of our stay at the ranch I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. I forsee another trip back up there in the future, as they have more stuff going on in the summer that I think Clare’d like.
Bored
