Chicago and Wisconsin : Day 3 - Wisconsin Dells & the Ponderosa

Aaaaargh! We were almost there! I was screaming "Hurry, hurry!" in my mind because I needed to go to the bathroom at my cousin's place in Morton Grove (a small suburb just outside of Chicago proper)! But as luck would have it, there was traffic moving at a glacier's pace on Dempster Road. Thanks to our newly purchased Garmin, we were able to bypass it and get to his place through another route...
After dropping some kids off at the pool and freshening up, we all got ready to make the trip to Wisconsin Dells which was about 3 and a half hours away. My cousin bought us a bag of cheeseburgers, fries and apple pies from McD's. The pies from the days of yore were much much better than this faux baked healthy shit. Gimme my fried apple pies! And while you're at it, bring back the Cherry flavor too! OMG - In Hawaii, their pies have killer flavors like Jackfruit, Taro and Haupia! Why can't we have that on the mainland? One bite of this was all I took. I shudder at the memory of actually ingesting this sad excuse of a dessert.
Yee haw...I'll spare you the painful details, but it was cold, it was raining and my cousin also neglected to tell us dumbass Californi-yan's about paying TOLLS ON THE FKG FREEWAY! We had enough change for the first two (I think they were .60 and .80 respectively), but we ended up calling him and pulling over to the side of the freeway before hitting another toll so we could get change from him. Yes, knowing about the fkg toll roads would have helped.
Welcome to watery Waterpark Hell at the Wilderness Resort!!! It was about to get worse when I was to find out that there would be no Wi-Fi in our cabin since it wasn't in the main hotel rooms area. It was out in the damn boonies!
Here we are...the Wildnerness Resort!
Since we got there before my cousin and the other family arrived, we decided to kill some time by driving down one of the roads. These are some of the sights that we saw...This is the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory.Man, who the FK is Tommy Bartlett? He must be a popular dude! Wait...turns out he's a Wisconsin showman and entertainment mogul.

I also saw a flier about the "Tommy Bartlett Waterskiing Show" so Tommy Bartlett is like, the Sheeyit!There were so many waterparks here! A lot of them were indoors so that's convenient for those rainy and coldass days.
Saw a bunch of these "True Blood"-rip off posters all over the place here! "Bitten at the Park" is a Haunted House attraction at the nearby Mt. Olympus waterpark
Nice lettering...Gilligan's Island font anyone? Oh yeah, there are tons and tons of cheesy and sleazy looking hotels here. And if you want fake dolphins, sharks or some other marine animal (or even a dinosaur) near the pool, this is your place. OMFG, this was NOT my idea of fun!
Tacky hotels galore!
Because we were at the mercy of my cousin's hospitality (they were paying for this cabin at the resort because they wanted to go there last month but couldn't go but waited until we came so they would have an excuse to go to this hellhole)...I mean...really, how could I be an ungrateful bitch of a cousin and refuse? Besides, this was our first time to Wisconsin and we were going to make the most of it...My cousin was originally going to barbecue for dinner but there wasn't a functional lighter (Wal-Mart here we come) so we went out to dinner instead. The dinner choice? The Ponderosa Steakhouse(cousin's wife). This is kind of like Sizzler, I guess. Nothing spectacular...My cousin's wife got the buffet for everybody and then ordered some ribeye steaks with wild rice and grilled onions as well. I didn't bother taking photos of the buffet. Just picture Hometown Buffet but with less selection and you got the picture. Oh yeah, there were lots of obese people there. One woman was almost as big as Gilbert Grape's mom.
The girl who was serving us was really polite and super nice. She kept asking us, "Is there anything I can get you all right away?" I thought the use of "right away" kind of odd but she said it about three times. Another side note - we were sitting next to Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel and his family. He and his wife were kind of arguing loudly with one another while one of the Ponderosa workers was trying to be a funny guy by telling lame jokes.
Here's some of that steak...One thing I noticed with my cousin and his family...they eat a lot of meat. I mean, a lot. Too much. Like majorly unhealthy amounts. I dont' think vegetables exist in their diet.
And more steak...
I'm calling this a night. Tomorrow I will make up an excuse not to go to the waterpark and instead be anti social...