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austin_dern

July 2025

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One of the first things done our second and, to date, final day at Gilroy Gardens was the antique car ride. This had also been one of our last rides our first day there. The ride divides the queue into two halves, one to ride 50s cars and one to ride 20s cars. We had started out our first visit hoping to ride in the 20s cars, and found the line for the 20s cars too long and slow for our nerves. The 50s queue was not as fast as we hoped, but we did get a ride in before the end of the day. Now, maybe we'd get a ride in at the start of the day.

Gilroy Gardens's antique car ride has a great twist, and a great way to get double the ride for not much more space. There's two tracks, paralleling one another but with cars riding in opposite directions. The 50s cars go clockwise and the 20s cars go counterclockwise, with the scenery in either direction rethemed to the decade. A gas station you pass on the 20s cars has your ancient lollipop gas pumps; from the 50s side, it's got chrome and wings. Billboards on the 50s side offer the hint of jets and TV dinners; on the 20s side, it's radios and the Model A. You can see the hints of the wrong time period on the other side, yes, and see and waves at people riding the other way from the other decade. But wow, what a fine idea.

While waiting --- I think on Tuesday, when we were waiting for the 50s cars --- we learned the curious structure of things. The 20s cars set four people; the 50s cars, looking more like convertibles, only seat two. So we assumed that, all things being equal, the 20s line would move twice as fast. Turns out that while the 20s cars have twice the individual capacity, there were only three cars running. The 50s side of things had six cars. We're not clear whether that was just what happened to be in service that day, or whether they always aim to have more of the lower-capacity cars.

Also the paths go around one of the Circus Trees. I had thought it looked like a radio tower and that's what we called it. Then we got a map and saw that it's instead the Oil Well. Which is at least as appropriate for the antique cars ride and I'm curious whether they placed the tree there first and built the cars around it after, or had the car ride and realized one of the circus trees fit its theme. Either way, strongly recommend the ride.


Now back a couple days here's getting to some rides at California's Great America.

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And here's The Demon getting ready to launch. There wasn't much of a wait so I forget why we didn't go for a front- or a back-seat ride. Maybe we weren't yet sure that our luck with the queues would hold up.


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And here's the Demon coming back and ready to give us a ride!


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The Demon's offset from the main walkway of the park a little bit, giving us this nice hill to look out over.


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Other side of the hill; you don't get this sort of observation deck in the flat midwestern amusement parks ... or do you?


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And here's one of the paths leading from the Demon back down to the main walkway.


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And the next ride was the other wooden coaster, The Grizzly.


Trivia: The last of Skylab 3/2's 39 Earth-oriented resource experiment package passes finished the 21st of September, 1973. The mission also saw six solar inertial passes, two Earth-limb surveys, and two lunar calibration sequences. Total data acquisition was about 40 percent higher than the pre-mission flight plan. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, Megan Kate Nelson.

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