sploooooosh!!

yesterday josh and i ventured south to check out wet and wild waterworld near el paso, texas - so when the afternoon rolled around, we got our crap together and went to the local pick quick for some cheap tickets, and then advanced token to said water park.

it was the weirdest feeling getting there and driving into the parking lot - i'm not kidding, except for all the cars parked everywhere this place looked like it's been closed for 50 years. we parked our car, grabbed our towels and made haste for the entrance, and slowly realized we could not find where to get into this place! it was obviously open, there were all kinds of people inside milling around with their towels and life rafts and such, but WHERE THE EFF DO YOU GET IN THE DOOR!?!?!

finally, as we walked the entire length of the outside of this place, we saw an open gate at the exit. since we couldn't actually see the entrance anywhere, in we went... and no one cared, so note to self for next time you could probably just walk right in without paying if you play your cards right...

when we got inside the place it was still totally weird, like if you've never been there before it's a little like what the shit?!?! cuz you're expecting water park and you walk into just a regular parky kind of place, with barbeques and stuff everywhere. once we got our bearings, we figured out where the lockers were - stowed our stuff, and off we went to explore!

wet and wild waterworld is a pretty good deal for the money - if you go monday through thursday, it's only 10 bucks. and if you go with food and drinks and food and such you can hang out all day - you can bring charcoal and rent one of their barbeques, too, which was pretty cool. AND you can drink beer. there was beer cans everywhere. i mean EVERYWHERE. we saw dudes standing in line for waterslides drinking beer. it was awesome. beer cans here, beer cans there, beer cans everywhere!

so from what we could tell in our 3 hours there, there are 3 major areas with all the good rides there. the first one has the amazon and alien encounter - amazon's kinda like the white water rafty type ride at wild rivers - very fun, but pretty tame. alien encounter should be called Human Toilet - you sit on a mat, go down a tube, and end up in a toilet that dumps you into a deep pool. IT'S AWESOME.

the next mountain has 2 big slides - one that's another rafty adventure like the amazon, and then THE SCREAMER. i don't know if wild rivers has any quite this fucking freaky, which means from now on there's no excuse when i'm at wild rivers, there's no ride too scary for me anymore. the screamer starts on a platform about 500 million feet in the air. you get in a tube, it's tubey for about 3 milliseconds, and then it's an almost vertical drop the entire way, then it puts you kinda horizontally and shoots you into a deep pool. you come up all discombobulated, and then to add to the fun there's a waterfall that dumps more water in your face as you swim to the exit. i literally almost pooped my pants standing in line for the ride, but it was totally worth it.

the last mountain has another rafty adventure, i think it was called the soaker, but this one was much shorter. you sit on the raft, and it's basically just a big drop and you skid across the water at the bottom. the second time josh and i went on this i accidentally ran over the lifeguard... she was a really good sport about it... then there was another tubey one with a mat, and another set of 2 mat slides - we spent the most time on that mountain cuz the lines were fast and the rides were fun.

afterwards we got funnel cake and ice cream and then we called it a night. went on back to las cruces for some fun times shooting in the desert, and josh put on one of his fabulous fireworks spectaculars! we start the long trek back to long beach tonight - it's been a great 2.5 weeks but i'm kinda ready to sleep in my own bed again.

also did i mention it's my birthday? brand new cars for everyone!