Housekeeping: This is just a wee reminder that this Friday will mark the opening of Saturday Steals for the weekend, which Saturday Steals I blithely ignored last weekend during a bout of defiant devil-may-care attitude toward this here blog. But not to worry, there will be a true Saturday Steals up and running this weekend. Beginning Friday, 8 p.m. Mayberry Standard Time, and lasting all weekend until Sunday, 11:59 p.m. MST.
For more information on what exactly Saturday Steals is and how you can participate, click here. Or to read through all the previous Saturday Steals posts to spy on other people’s good steals, click here.
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Over the too-short Christmas holiday, Poor Kyle and I voyaged from Mayberry, Canada to Mesa, Arizona and then to Palm Springs, California in the name of visiting family and also just getting the hell out of sub-freezing temperatures for a spell.
It was nice.
Notice the chillingly blue background, taken somewhere around Montana. Also notice, if you will, the deep ocean blue of my husband’s eyes. Then direct your attention to the murky lake water hue of my own less striking eyes. Worthless.
As part of our Christmas gift to each other, we also decided that we (Poor Kyle and myself) should go to a theme park in California together, just the two of us.
It was to be the first time in our marriage we’d ever done that.
We’d been to Disneyland several times together, but always before with either his family or my own, which trips were fun to be sure, but you know it’s impossible to have a fully relaxing time at a theme park with either one’s or one’s spouses in-laws along for the ride(s).
Nothing against in-laws [I love my own in-laws and Poor Kyle gets along well with his], but you know.
Remember too, if you will, that I was also pretty spiteful on aforementioned Disneyland trips with my new husband on account of his not being a Disneyland Virgin, whereas I had saved my own untarnished D-Virginity for That Special Someone.
Also I was bitter that he refused to ride Splash Mountain with me. On more than one occasion.
So anyway, considering our history with the Happiest Place on Wherever, we decided to start with a blank slate, a tabula rasa of marital theme park experiences if you will, and opted instead for Knott’s Berry Farm.
Knott’s Berry Farm was in many ways like Disneyland (overpriced, annoyingly chirpy, lines of strollers at every turn), but in many ways completely different.
I don’t think Disneyland has funnel cake, for one thing.
And I know they don’t have Dippin’ Dots. (We are food-oriented travelers, in case that wasn’t obvious by now.)
But was more than just the victuals—Knott’s Berry Farm had an altogether different feel to it.
They had a horse-drawn (four horses to be precise) stagecoach free for riders, which you would be hard-pressed to find at Walt’s place on account of the sheer size of things over there. The logistics of it just don’t work at Disneyland.
Not that you can tell, but here’s us on the stagecoach ride.
They had impromptu gun fights break out smack in the middle of the streets, completely at random and which startled me on more than one brain-harrowing occasion. Although I probably could’ve done without the aneurysms, I had to admit it charmed me in a way I’ve never experienced at D-land. (PK was happy because one of the villains handed him the blank shell when the shoot-out was over. You’d’ve thought he’d been handed a hundred dollar bill.)
They had a statue of a prisoner in a one-room jail cell who would talk to you—actually address you as Hey Lady or Hello Sir, ask where you were from, and comment on said hometown—which really threw me off guard. Again, not something you see at Disneyland largely due to the huge volume of visitors it gets every day.
Poor Kyle, for his money, actually prefers Knott’s Berry Farm over Disneyland and would pick it any day. He grew up going to both parks regularly and holds the fonder memories of KBF.
As for me, I grew up in a Disneyland family all the way. I sort of felt like I was cheating on Walt when I got my hand stamped at the KBF gates. My one and only experience of Knott’s Berry Farm consisted of a ninth grade band trip during which I waited in line for the Ghost Rider for three hours, which ride I cannot remember on account of having waited in line with Ferrick Trellis, the boy I crushed on for five consecutive years (seventh through twelfth grades, respectively) and who pretty much obliterated any and every other memory of the park for me, damn his pimpled face.
So I was happy to make new memories in the place. Needless to say.
We walked onto every ride with absolutely no wait. We gorged ourselves on true western delicacies. We were in no real rush to see much of anything: we sauntered through the park, sat when we felt like sitting, roller coasted when we felt like coasting, and basically remembered why we married each other in the first place.
Hint: it wasn’t for the facial hair.
But we had a good time.
Go there someday.
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