The Sausage Pad Lays Siege to St. Joseph, Pt. IV

(contd.)

The morning of Day Four.  The thrilling conclusion to our PG-13 affair.

Kris fries up even more bacon.  As if we weren't all fat enough already.

Not sure exactly how it happened, but I got suckered into playing board games with the kids every morning.  Here we're playing through one of our girls' favorite games, 5 Minute Dungeon.

The younger kids were pretty much useless, but Damon's boys got the hang of it pretty fast, and my girls are already pros.

Today was supposed to be, at least with regards to the weather, the nicest day of the weekend - low 80s and super sunny - so we decided to hit up St. Joseph's premiere beach - Silver Beach - and spend the entire day there.  Smitty was still asleep, so Rita assured us she would drive them up later when he got around (you know, 'cause Smitty likes sleeping in.)

We arrived in the late morning, and realized - in horror - that, like, everyone else in Southwest Michigan had the exact same idea as us.

The beach was packed.  We found a vacant spot that was about 10ft from our closest neighbors, and began establishing Sausage Pad headquarters.

Not a face mask to be seen for miles.

Zack Smith, a soulless Ginger himself, enthusiastically approves of Smitty's recent purchase.

Watching the kids play in the lake.

(Kris is dancing to rap music.  Like only a middle-aged white woman can.)

After a few hours of hanging out on the beach, me and the guys got bored, so we decided to head back up to the shopping district to hit up some more shops.

Just in case you were curious.

I didn't take a lot of pictures during our going in and out of shops, but while Zack and Damon bought sweatshirts and t-shirts for their wives and kids, I ducked back into that antique store from the day before and picked up four or five more records.  I made out like a bandit on this trip, I was pretty pumped.

We got back to the beach just as a huge freighter began to slowly pull into the canal that cuts through the town.  Pretty cool to see - like watching a city block float through the water.

On the way back from the beach, later on in the afternoon, we sat in standstill traffic waiting for the bridge to lower for a solid half an hour.  The freighter we had watched from the beach was making its way - ridiculously slow - through the canal.  Like, you could walk faster than it was going.

See ya later, asshole.

When we got back to the campground, we saw that most of the grounds had cleared out.  It was Sunday, after all, and most people had left.

This had all been previously jam-packed with RVs and tent.

 

We're still here, though.  We had a solid four nights and five days reserved.

 

The kids broke out this Headbandz game that they enjoy taking along on camping trips.

(I didn't take any of these vidoes.)

We barely put a dent into these snacks. . .

Our fridge game was on point this weekend.

Kris, prowlin' for snacks.

Zack breaks out some ice cream sundae supplies for the kids, in his usual not-at-all kid-friendly, Zack Smith way.

 

The more sugar the better.  Screw it, we're on vacation.

Smitty swooped in for ice cream as well.  Of course.  He needed the pick-me-up - him and Rita had driven around St. Joseph for hours trying to find a parking spot at the beach, and in the end they, too, got stuck at the bridge waiting for the freighter to pass through the canal.  He was pretty pissed he missed out on the beach trip for the day, but his spirits rose after he got some ice cream - and some beer - in his system.

I could've easily watched this all day - Kris and Rita attempting to close up Smitty's beach tent.

The brothers Smith are equally amused at the spectacle.

 

We were forecast to get a thunderstorm in the late evening, around 10pm, so we did our best to breakdown as much of the camp as humanly possible.  We struck all but one of our shaded pavilions, and loaded up as much of the camping gear as possible in our vehicles.  Not wanting a repeat of our doomed vacation in Silverlake's Jellystone Campground, I put all my expensive items - my ukulele, camera and lenses, laptop, etc. - in Kris' van, for safe keeping.  Fool me once, Rain God.

I started a bonfire in the late afternoon to start ridding ourselves of the mountains of cardboard and paper waste we had lying around the campsite.  It raged like a funeral pyre for hours.

The usual from the Cannonball.

Dance party around the campfire.

Hours later, still raging.

The rains did, in fact, roll in late in the night, and came down super hard for about an hour.  During the duration of the storm, we regularly checked our tents, and - miraculously - nothing got wet.  No flooding, no nothing.  After awhile, the rain let up and we continued hanging out and playing cards late into the night.  At one point, some grizzled old park associate told us to quiet down - despite us being pretty quiet, and nowhere near as loud as a group of old drunks about six sites over that we could all hear clear as day.  Oh well, I guess after twenty some years, the Sausage Pad still has that Troublemaker look about them. . .

 - Fin - 

- Brian

An Evening with the Masses

I'm not sure which one I hate more - crowds or traffic.  It's not that I'm claustrophobic or anything, either. . . I just can't stomach large groups of people all crammed together.  It tends to bring out the stupid in the masses, and so it's little wonder as I grow older I notice my mood exponentially souring in relation to the amount of people packed in around me.

Take this evening, for example.

Disney?  Christmas?  Surely NOTHING can go wrong.

We've been slowly but surely preparing for the Holidays this weekend ('cause, after all, it's after Halloween and all, and that's just how society rolls these days), and Kris felt it might be fun to take the girls out to Downtown Disney for the evening to check out the lights they have up.

Sounds pleasant enough so far, right?

Yeah.

Well, it turns out reaching the parking lot at Downtown Disney is equatable to dropping off a magic ring in a volcano with Sean Astin - it takes for-f***ing-ever, and most of it along the way just plain sucks.
 

Sure, it was Saturday night and all, and that is historically the absolute crappiest time of the week to visit there, but usually you don't start hitting Disney traffic until you're, oh, within eyesight of the parking lot.

We turned off the main road onto the drive that leads to Downtown Disney and were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for over half an hour.  Thirty minutes.  For a four or five minute drive.  It was excruciating.  I managed to keep my self sane by observing a young couple pushing a stroller along the sidewalk next to use.  We almost caught up with them a few times, but ultimately they left our vehicle - and all the other retarded cars sitting motionless in the street - in their dust and disappeared down the sidewalk.

Cowabunga.

As it turns out, the congestion of people on this particular evening was due to the geniuses at Disney deciding to build a series of parking garages along the main drive.  I guess I shouldn't be too shocked at this, really - that whole complex has been under construction since we first moved down here in 2007.  Whenever they unveil a new attraction there - usually a shop, restaurant or nightspot - it quickly fizzles out and they end up having to tear it down and rebuild something else.  In the eight years we've been down there, I don't think I've seen it once without some kind of temporary construction wall set up.

But holy shit was I not prepared for this.

Bring on the sheeple.

Downtown Disney no longer resembles Downtown Disney.  After weeks and weeks of sitting in traffic, Kris finally fought her way into a parking lot and found a parking space.  Minutes later, we were entering the West Side of the complex, where hordes of stupid tourists bottlenecked in the street.  Then, inexplicably, the road ceased and a wall rose up to block our way forward.  The torrent of multi-national bodies broke against it like some idiotic sea, gushing right or left with little direction from signage.

See those walls?  They're all over the Goddamn place now.

Imagine a labyrinth designed by a kid with Down's Syndrome and you kinda get what I'm talking about.

We wandered around like idiots for about ten minutes, trying to find our way over to the Marketplace section of Downtown Disney, where all the Christmas decorations were set up (as you'll recall, our whole reason for going out for the evening.)  In the end, Kris stumbled across Planet Hollywood and asked a doorman (or whatever they're called) for directions. and we were led down a series of walkways along the man-made pond the complex sits upon.

Imagine this here, but surrounded by temporary construction walls and swarming with idiots.

Long story short, after a few more weeks of trekking along the waterfront - dodging in and out of foreign tourists who don't know how to walk in public - we finally reached the Marketplace, and were finally able to take a deep breath and let our kids loose.

So here's some pictures from the rest of the evening.  I'm getting a drink.

In the Lego Store, letting the kids work themselves up into a frenzy.

Alayna plays with Legos occasionally, but Abby's the one who's obsessed with them - specifically the Lego Friends sets.  She saw a Lego Friends Camper/Van/RV set we had to literally pry from her hands before leaving the store - she only put it down when we told her she could add it to her Christmas list.

Playing with mini-figures

A solid chunk of our evening at Downtown Disney was spent in that large, open area where they have water shooting up from the ground (in the Summer.)  At night they break out the club-ish lights and a DJ blasts obnoxious, shallow dance music.  Pure horribleness for someone like Yours Truly, but the kids took to it like straight-up crack.

Abby has turned into an all-out dancing fanatic.  Straight outta left field.  No idea who teaches her how to dance like she does.

Once they had danced some of their pent-up energy out of their system, Kris and I took them over to the Christmas store in order to smurf out some decorations for the tree.

(Pulled this off the ol' internet so you can see the inside of the store.)  The girls were hard to handle in a store like this, despite our 'look with your eyes, not with your hands' speech.  Not the most kid-friendly of spots.

Kris picked this up for me (as you'll remember, we buy each other an ornament every year for Christmas.)  I guess we've reached that point in our marriage after nearly ten years together where we just tell each other what we want and buy it.  The Haunted Mansion has always been one of our favorite attractions in Disney World (definitely in my top three.)

Of course, we had to put on a show for the kids, so I had to stand outside the store while Kris and the girls bought the ornament (you know, 'cause I didn't know at all what they were buying me.)  At least while I waited outside I got to people-watch tourists pose for an official Disney photographer in front of a giant Frozen mural.  I'm sure these night shots cost $19.95.

Chowin' down on some free Ghirardelli chocolates (Peppermint Bark. . . you know, 'cause it's Christmas.)  The girls had to hit that joint up on our way back through Marketplace.

They had a Santa set up nearby, but the line to sit on the dude's lap was ridiculous, so we picked up a couple of the cheap, Frozen sticker sheets/ornaments they were handing out for free in the line.  And, of course, snagged a picture with this handsome bloke.

Abby's flashing the Frozen ornament in her hand, there.  She was pretty proud of it.

Afterwards, we begun the not-quite-as-long-'cause-we-knew-where-we-were-going trek back to the West Side and our parking spot.

One last look at the clusterf*** that is Downtown Disney.

- Brian