Lagoon Still Pretty Scary For The Old Man

Tonight's post will have little or nothing to do with sport.  Unless you consider maneuvering through a large amusement park crowd with the ease of Adrian Peterson pulling a string of daughters behind him a sport.  Because today, that was me.  Light on my feet, swivel-hipped, yet balanced... it was beautiful.

Each of the last four autumn's, I have loaded up (or squeezed) the wife and kids in the family truckster and headed down to Farmville, Utah... home of the Beehive State's largest amusement park.
We get our tickets early in the summer, as a gift from my employer, but hang on to them until the season turns to Fall and the theme of Halloween takes over the place.  They call it "Frightmares".

The entire park is decorated with ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, spider webs, you name it... and freaky characters sporting Hannibal Lecter masks and imitation chainsaws roam the grounds.  Visitors are clad in jeans and hoodies instead of the normal summertime shorts and tank tops.  As the sun day goes on, Dads can be seen checking their phones for scores from college football games and mothers feed their kids funnel cakes instead of snow cones.  It is Fall... and it is Frightmares!

It's not easy for me to give up a day of college football to go to an amusement park, but after I get the car packed up and start the 70 mile trek down into the valley, I realize what a great time it is.  I always have so much fun.  More than the kid's probably.  At some point during the day each of them has some sort of emotional breakdown making me feel like shit because they are unhappy.  But that passes and by the end of the day I realize how special it is to take the young ones to a place like Lagoon, because my parents took me and look how I turned out!  Oh Lawd!