incredible birthday adventure - day 3

Punk solves the next clue, and realizes we are heading for Tommy Bartlets Exploratory – robots here we come! The trip to Wisconsin Dells takes 2 1/2 hours, during which Kooka provides the entertainment. She belts out such standbys as: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, My New Philosophy, Love Grows, and her personal favorite Let your Hair Down. She’s not bad, but the rest of us are not allowed to talk while she is performing. It gets to be a long two hours.

We arrive at the Mayflower Hotel – four swimming pools, and a lofted bedroom in our “suite.” We picked it for the lack of on-site waterpark (we have free passes to six of the big ones), but still, as we pull into the parking lot, it’s hard not to be envious of the people at the Wilderness Lodge & Resort. Anyway, the kids adore having their own upstairs space, and spend about 30 minutes checking things out and watching cartoons, before we head to the Robot Exploratory.


The Exploratory is “cooler” than Punk expected. Kooka takes on mom in 3D tic-tac-toe, Aaron tries out the electric chair, Punk and Mom both ride a bicycle across a tightrope (yeah it was scary), and we all tour the MIR space station.




Then it’s off to Crabby’s seafood bufet, where Kooka tries tries crab legs and pronounces them delicious. She also tries sushi, and says it’s pretty good. Aaron puts away a bucket of crab legs. Punk, normally a seafood lover, balks at the whole tuna sitting on the buffet. People are stabbing forks into it’s side and ripping off chunks of flesh. He is also beyond outraged out at the little red crayfish staring up at him. Needless to say, he steers clear of the crab legs.


I’m with him. I don’t eat seafood anyway, and like it even less when it’s still looking at me. I stick to the macaroni, prime rib and salad. At Kooka’s insistence I try a bite of sushi – it is pretty good – if you like sticky rice and cat food. Actually everything at Crabby’s tastes like cat food – even the salad. We could be eating Fancy Feast for all I can tell. Oh well, at least the crocodile and animatronic pirates are cool. Sort of. They keep spouting out real pirate-y gems like “Agggghhr sailor, don’t forget to stop the spread of germs, take a clean plate each time you visit the buffet matey!”

Between that and the classy T-shirts that say, “Got Crabs? We do!” I don’t think we’ll be back anytime soon.