austin_dern | Twisting time is here

I'll get back to Elitch Gardens after looking over my humor blog, as is usual for Thursdays around here. You can get this stuff on your Reading page, if you'd rather, or add it to whatever RSS reader you use.

A Great Alarm, From My Dreams a true-ish story of some alarming events.
In Which The Clickbait Almost Gets Me in case you didn't already know my tastes.
Statistics Saturday: Your Christmas Special Viewing Schedule if you never watch anything but Rankin/Bass stuff.
What’s Going On In Gasoline Alley? Wait, if Slim’s here then who’s playing Santa Claus? September – December 2019 as that comic gets into its Christmas swing.
In Which I Notice A Gap In Our Pop Culture in the form of one of those movies it sure seems like should exist but doesn't.
60s Popeye: Hamburger Fishing which is the kind of subject line you get when I can't think of a good subject line.
I kind of tried for the weekly very-short wordplay games.
Returning To The Alarms which is this week's pile of alarming thoughts.

Photograph I took of one of the park's map signboards. The focus is just on the water park.

And, you know, here's the list of water park attractions, plus some surrounding materials. Why could I ever find this interesting enough to photograph, and to later share?

A-ha! A different park map sign showing a sticker put over the water park area. What on the earlier map had been #4, Hook's Lagoon (``Five-story treehouse that offeres a wet 'n wild adventure'') is, here ... looks like some sort of magic fountain in the water, instead. Since we didn't go into the water park we can't say which version of the park is correct.

Venturing into the Kiddieland area. They had a roller coaster we weren't sure whether we could ride.

Kiddie swings ride with, in the background, a roller coaster.

Station, and photo sale booth, for the Blazin' Buckaroo kiddie coaster.

Oh, and next to it, the Elitch Express miniature train ride.

But here, back to the Blazin' Buckaroo kiddie coaster. It's a normal enough miniature roller coaster. Now that I look at this, I'm not sure how there's enough space there for riders' heads not to get lopped off.

The control station and launch station for the Blazin' Buckaroo coaster. It turns out that adults aren't allowed to ride it. Or unaccompanied adults aren't. I'm still not sure. This could have been communicated to us earlier, though. The ride did have a line, after all.

Back to the antique carousel! We rode in the chariot, which had this U-shaped couch open at the back, the end of which was roughly at level with the ride flat.

Looking at the column of horses behind the chariot.

Looking forward from the chariot, over its front edge, to the harness 'attaching' it to the horses ahead.

Trivia: When it closed up in May 1943 the Works Progress Administration had about 37,000 employed yet, about 250 of them administrative staff. Source: American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: Then FDR put the Nation to Work, Nick Taylor.

Currently Reading: Apollo Pilot: The Memoir of Astronaut Donn Eisele, Donn Eisele, Editor Francis French. French working from manuscripts that Eisele wrote up, in various different drafts, but never had organized for publication.