On our way to certain death!

This picture speaks for itself.

On our way.

Things weren’t much better here.

Definitely doomed

My big brother came down to visit with his wife and we headed out for a day at Dollywood. We love roller coasters and Dollywood has some fantastic ones.

My neck doesn’t like the really rough ones nowadays but sometimes the pain is worth the ride.  We started on Thunderhead and you can see in the picture the neck stresses were too much for my SIL and she’s got her head planted on my brother’s shoulder. I’m hanging on to help keep from getting whipped side to side while my more petite wife kept her hands in the air throughout.

No this isn’t a stickup.

We moved on to the Drop Zone or whatever it’s called that drops you from 20 stories. I’m not sure they had cameras on that. Never even thought about it while we were there. I loved that feeling of zero gravity for a couple of seconds. I suspect though that a picture would show that I was a little surprised when it let go.

Next up was the Mystery Mine I think. That’s the second picture at the top. Clearly the boys were having a better time there than the ladies. Or were they? My SIL demurred on the Tennessee Tornado. That’s the first picture above. That one had a really nice surprise right off the bat. That’s what was going on in the picture.

We also rode the Wild Eagle and pretty much all agreed that was our favorite of the day. It was fast and smooth and we didn’t feel as beat up at the end.

Me and my bride on Wild Eagle
Big bro and SIL on Wild Eagle

The park was nice, the rides were fantastic though a couple were closed, but oh my do they need some help on the food. Yuck. Next time I’m going to pack a lunch in the car. We did enjoy the hot fresh cinnamon bread but the barbecue there was a terrible disappointment. It was so bad I know I won’t be trying it again. We picked a bad place to try a milkshake too. Next time we’ll try one at the hand scooped ice cream place and see if that’s better.

One of the surprising highlights was the magic show. That was fun. We didn’t try the water rides on this trip but maybe the next time we’ll get into those as well.