Posted by OK, so with school, work, and all, it’s going to be a bit much to try and sift through all my photos to report on everything I did in 2020. After all, the 2021 theme park season has already started. And let’s be real, even with most things in Utah being open, 2020 was kind of lame. 2021 is looking to be a LOT better, with most parks loosening capacity restrictions and reservations — which means more spontaneity!
So I’m just going to copy/paste my list of places visited here. And call it good. If I want to, I’ll edit this later. I probably won’t, though.
Academically, I have talked with my advisor and they were very supportive of my decision to wait on 513 until I have more experience. It is part of my program of study, so I will not be graduating from my master’s program until I have taken robust control. This is a HUGE relief for me. I’m a bit behind right now, but the future starts today. I will be adjusting accordingly. Rest assured that I have not and never will give up. It’s just that sometimes you have to prepare a little bit more before charging into a battle.
Here are the rest of my trips from last year:
7/18 Splash Summit
7/20 SCERA Park Pools — this was a lovely day
7/22 Sunrise Station Park, and failing to get to Cowabunga, and Provo Rec Center — This was annoying, and Sunrise Station sucks and has no bathroom. Provo RC is always great though.
7/24-ish Grand Teton National Park — a wonderful trip, but too many spiders.
7/29 Lagoon full day
7/31 Cowabunga Bay — dude, I LOVE this place. Not sure if it’s worth the $109 season pass for this year, but this water park is FREAKING AMAZING.
8/03 Splash Summit — this may have been my trip where I tried to ride everything in the park
8/07 Splash Summit — aw yiss
8/08-ish, Tetons again, 10th was Yellowstone: One of the best family trips I’ve been on, other than killing a spider at 3 AM while trying to pee and having a bunch of baby ones come out from under it. But WOW the geyser fields were active at Yellowstone, and sitting at a hammock in String Lake on a gorgeous summer afternoon is quintessential paradise.
8/15, Splash Summit, just body slides this time (and it was short), tried to get shirt — So they do have a tiny little shop, but no Splash Summit-specific merch yet. So I didn’t buy anything.
8/19, Lagoon — Trip with my friend Ben! This was a great one! Picture two 20-something year old dudes trying to fit into the back row of Engine 86. That was awesome!
8/21, Anderson Park and Pleasant Grove Pool — decent, but not great, pool was extremely packed and smelled kinda weird. Water slides were slow, but still fun.
There was at LEAST one other Splash Summit trip in there. I went to Splash Summit a TON.
8/30 Palisade and Foothill Park
Then there were a few September trips but not many because school had started. There was my super frantic Labor Day weekend trip to get to ALL THE WATER PARKS before they closed for the season (so sad). Then, there was my Cherry Hill trip the Saturday after Labor Day (September 12th, 2020). I marathoned Double Dragons and that shiz was FIRE. I also finally rode the tiny waterslide known as Little Dipper, which was a very fun 3 seconds.
My Labor Day weekend consisted of the Lehi outdoor pool (an awesome hidden gem; the light blue slide is fantastic), the American Fork outdoor pool (meh), the Lindon Aquatic Center (one of the best lazy rivers I’ve been on), and the Spanish Fork Water Park (small, but nice).
I also went with Ben and Maren to the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, which is A+. Did you know that they have land animals as well? It’s almost like a small zoo, with a heavy emphasis on aquatic life.
In September I also flew solo at the Utah State Fair. I only rode Black Out and another pay-extra ride, Speed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_(ride) Just FYI, that ride is AMAZING. Additionally, I went to Hogle Zoo and bumped into a few friends at the elephant exhibit.
Provo Rec Center was supposed to keep their outdoor water park open until the first week of October, which would have been fantastic, but then everybody started panicking about covid again. So we got screwed over with that.
In October I made a few trips to Lagoon, including a trip with Ben, his cousin Lizzie, Greg, and a few others, plus some of Ben’s family. It was my first ever time doing Frightmares, and my first time doing haunted attraction walkthroughs since the few I did at Universal Studios for a high school band trip. That trip was awesome. Some demonic girl was screaming “YOU TOOK MY BOOK!” and I yelled “I FAILED ENGLISH!” I have never once failed an English class.
The last Lagoon trip for me was on Halloween, then I went to Ben’s party for a bit after that. It was an absolutely gorgeous fall day, and I say this even as a summer lover. The weather was perfect. It was so sad to transition into November. I missed the last day of the season because it was Sunday. I might bend the rules and go to Lagoon on a Sunday this Halloween, because I love being there on both the first AND last days of the season. But, we shall see.
In late October, I went with some family to Red Hills Desert Park while staying in St. George.
I also went to the Wilkerson Farm Fall Fair with William and the others. I was bummed that the tiny little Ferris wheel, Star Gazer, wasn’t running. But the corn maze was fun, I destroyed my sunglasses case and burst open my water bottle on Dust Devil, I spun as fast as possible on the super ghetto Fruit Salad (pro tip: Blueberry spins the fastest), I loved the hayride, and our entire group went on Wilkerson’s Windmill a bunch of times. I was also super stressed because we went mid-week and I had a buttload of homework, but man was it a fun night.
November, December, January, and February were all trash. But hey, at least there was Christmas, and that was fun. I love winter break. I also made 1 trip to the Provo Rec Center (swimming with Aspen) in which we did a pool workout, and I also went on both of the indoor waterslides.
Overall, I’m really happy with how the summer and early fall turned out despite 2020 being crap. But 2021 is already shaping up to be a LOT better. Let’s do this.