Schlitterbahn!!!!

I don't usually go for multiple exclamation points, but it is appropriate for this post. We went to Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels, Texas this weekend. First, general admission actually gets you into three separate parks!

The first park is classic Schlitterbahn. It is now over 30 years old--and looks it! It was somewhat poorly designed so that walking anywhere requires weaving through hordes of tube and/or cooler carrying lemmings. It is also near-impossible to find the beginning of most of the rides. But the rides we did ride here were great. For those readers who are White Water in Branson, Missouri connoisseurs, the rapids rides were way longer and more windy.

Next, we hopped on a tram and rode to Surfenburg. This park contained my favorite--the current river. Unlike White Water, the current is actually quite fast. Additionally, rides actually empty into the river which creates a good deal of chaos and enticed Eddy to steer our rafts toward said exits in order to catch the fastest currents. In addition to your average double-tube slides, this park also had the Boogie Bahn Surfing Ride where you can body board on a huge water-jet powered wave. There were a few kids on this ride who would do crazy body board tricks. We just lamely floated off to the side.
Finally, there is Blastenhoff--the craziest of the three water parks. Blastenhoff has all of the major thrill rides including a "world famous" uphill waterslide. The wait for the bigger rides was >2 hours, so we only rode the Master Blaster which goes uphill in some places. It was great! There is also another current river in this park, but in addition to frothy jets of water, this river also has huge waves. Needless to say, this was basically a human hornets nest with people exhibiting all kinds of raw animal behaviors.

Towards the end of the day, we were more than beat, so we entertained ourselves by circulating on the current river at Surfenburg and repeatedly riding the big slide that fed into the river.

On the way home, we decided to stop at the famous Buc-ees to see what all the hype is about. Turns out, it is just a gas station, but they do have lots of slogans about Beavers.