After the antique car ride we wanted to spend time being sure we'd seen the whole of Gilroy Gardens. We couldn't be, of course; the park is laid out as a proper botanical gardens, where you can safely get lost and forget how you got where you are. The addition of rides hasn't hurt that at all; as densely packed as some areas are, there's few areas with long sightlines, and it's easy to walk up on a ride you didn't suspect was there. It's wonderful and soothing the way the park offers this. And there are many sub-areas of the park, each with wandering paths, defying a systematic exploration.
One of the first areas we got to after the car ride, then, was the Panoramic Wheel, a Ferris wheel with a floral styling to the wheel spokes, and soft purple cars that suggest lilacs or something like that. The path to it and queue wasn't as lovely as the covered-garden walkway for the Garlic Twist ride. But it was a nice, twisty path through bamboo, shaded but dappled with so much light, and bringing us to the hill that the Panoramic Wheel was on in style.
This would give us an unparalleled view of the park from above, although from above it looks like a forest. A couple of rides or scenic areas stand out above the treeline, and a few buildings are long enough and close enough to be seen. But the overwhelming impression is of being in a manicured woods, forty(?) feet up, and left to yourself and your thoughts.
I'm sad to report we had some pleasant conversation with the ride operator that I have forgotten.
After this we went back to the Quicksilver Express roller coaster. It's a good ride and the theming is great and I was better-prepared now to get decent pictures of the raccoon animatronics hidden behind the entrance sign. Also to point them out to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger --- she hadn't noticed them on our first visit --- and to pay attention to how they looked from on the ride. You get a good view of them as the train returns to the station, but only if you remember to look.
We were also making a more concerted effort, with map in hand, to be sure we saw all the circus trees. We were doing well at seeing the ones within the park --- we still didn't suspect the ones at the entrance --- but one eluded us. The spot for it was hidden behind a construction fence, and what I could see of the space behind was a cleared area. I couldn't imagine they'd have dug out one of their circus trees, except to relocate it or bring it to the tree hospital. Well, I put my camera over the fence and, blindly, shot some pictures and found that the listed tree, Zig Zag, was there, just that there's stuff going on behind it that required the clearing of other non-celebrity trees and other plants behind it. I'll count that as having visited the spot at least.
And here's a couple more pictures from California's Great America!
Drop Tower's looking beautiful in that clear sky. We didn't ride, although if we had unlimited time I might have gone for it.
And here we are in front of Rad Blazer ... and noticed something that wasn't true before.
Yeah, the ride was up and running! Here's a train on a return hill, a rare shot for me of a coaster going up underneath the lift hill.
You can see each train seats only eight people, in a row. So we thought we'd see how bad the line was --- it wasn't at all --- and ride if we could. We hadn't been on this style of single-track coaster before.
The station has one of those monitors where you can see whether everyone around you is following directions and belting in properly. Well, you can see if you look behind you, anyway.
And there's the seats. We got back-seat rides, and the harnesses were pretty comfortable and the ride fun. Glad we got the experience.
Trivia: The earliest known instance of coffee being served in France was by Pierre de la Roque, who served his friends in 1644 in Marseilles, a prot that would be the center of the French coffee trade. Source: The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour, Joan DeJean.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 26: Paradise Peak, Part 3, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that book about Saving Yellowstone finally got to the part about the Congressional fight to establish Yellowstone as a national park and it turns out there wasn't much to it. Basically advocates said if they didn't preserve it, it'd turn into another Niagara Falls and there you go. Also the book ends with a note about how the author had to cut her archive research short because of the pandemic and that brief time when there were lockdowns and we made progress on stopping a deadly disease. So this is the first book where I can say with confidence the pandemic had an effect on the writing. (I wonder if the story about the Congressional fight was cut short by primary sources suddenly becoming so much harder to access, but don't know.)
