Sat­u­ra­tion Station

I have had these pho­tos sit­ting in my draft post box for ages! Ever since Annabelle’s sleep­over. Avery is obsessed now with the water park where we had our adven­tures. And so I don’t for­get, and so you know where to go should you come to Mid­dle­bury, Con­necti­cut, it’s Quassy Amuse­ment Park, a hun­dred-year-old park full of dry and wet rides, and pro­vid­ed us with one of the most excit­ing days of the whole summer.

Until this sum­mer, I had seen bill­boards for Quassy on the way to Jill and Joel’s house, but it nev­er occurred to me to go. Then Avery and I decid­ed that a day of get­ting real­ly soak­ing wet, and pos­si­bly hav­ing a hot dog to go with it, was just the tick­et, and that Annabelle should come along. So we packed up our bag of tow­els and sun­block and bev­er­ages, and head­ed off, singing at the top of our lungs to the Bea­t­les. I must add: musi­cal­ly speak­ing the sum­mer has been defined by Songs in the Car. If you haven’t heard Sheryl Crow’s duet with Sting, “I’m Always on Your Side,” you must. Avery and I, one day, lis­tened to it pos­si­bly 60 times in a row to get two phras­es JUST RIGHT. Also, John has exposed Avery to Queen, so she spends a lot of time shout­ing, “We will we will ROCK YOU,” which brings back hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries of var­i­ous after-game high school dances where I nev­er had a date. But the music’s good.

Any­way, we sang along and arrived at the park, and spent the next few hours get­ting sweaty on the dry rides (I skipped the Heli­copter, and the MusicFest, but the girls loved them), hav­ing that hot dog, and slushies for the girls, get­ting soaked in the water park (“Over 30 ways to get wet!” the web­site trum­pets). Best of all was, how­ev­er, the Sat­u­ra­tion Sta­tion. As you can see, it’s an enor­mous buck­et sus­pend­ed high about the water park, grad­u­al­ly fill­ing with water. 400 gal­lons! When it reach­es a crit­i­cal mass, it tips over, bury­ing the peo­ple under­neath in water so freez­ing you sim­ply have to scream! We all clung togeth­er under where the water would fall, wait­ing in ridicu­lous fear, then sim­ply shout­ed our heads off and inhaled a great deal of water, plus step­ping all over each oth­er’s feet. But it was GLORIOUS.

And it gave the girls strength to go the bumper car route, as well as the famous Quassy Super Slide on a nasty burlap rug that brought back mem­o­ries of some sim­i­lar slide in my child­hood. And just like then, you get to scrape your arm against some rough bit of the slide as you pelt down­ward, and have a nice scrape to prove you were brave.

What a day.