cedar point.

cedar point, america's rollercoast. another item officially checked off my bucket list (soon to follow). we left wheaton saturday night at 5 and set out for sandusky, ohio (i still haven't figured out why anyone would choose such a place for the world's greatest theme park). we had planned to stay at a friend's lake cottage at lakeside, ohio. essentially this is a large christian camp community on lake erie which explains for some of the oddities we encountered. at 11:30pm we pull into the community to find the gate closed...with a pad lock and chain, not even an automatic lock. which means that every night and morning someone has to open the gate. the fact that no one can get in or out by this gate is also kinda creepy. so we drove around looking for another way to get in....3 closed gates later and 1 phone call to the gate keeper, we found the 1 open gate. when we get to our friend's cottage we were in for another treat. don't get me wrong, we are definitely grateful to have had a free place to stay the night, but it was definitely an experience. this cottage came straight from the 70s accompanied with various patterns of shag carpet and an oiling painting of Jesus. classy. the park didn't open the next day until noon so we got to sleep in and rest up for our big day. on our way out of lakeside we stopped at the local cafe and got coffee, hot chocolate and breakfast. just like the rest of the community, the cafe was adorned with interesting artwork and statues of greek gods...? then it was time for cedar point! after about 3 u-turns we were finally there! unfortunately it rain for the first 3 hours but that didn't dampen our spirits except for the fact that most of the roller coasters were closed due to the rain and high speed winds. after warming up on the smaller roller coasters, the good ones finally opened. right as we got on the  millennium force it started drizzling which is not a good combination with a roller coaster that goes 93 mph. regardless, it was awesome. i literally didn't stop laughing/screaming the whole time. i have been wanting to ride it for about 10 years when a family friend from michigan told me stories about the greatness of this ride. around 4 it completely stopped raining and it actually turned out to be a nice day. we rode more awesome rides including the world's tallest and fastest - top thrill dragster. basically this is just a giant horseshoe that last 16.8 seconds. in less than 4 seconds you go from 0 to 120 mph. the scariest part was the sudden take off and i didn't even have time to be scared because it was so fast. coming down the horseshoe my voice went out because we were going so fast. when we got off we were all so stunned and couldn't stop marveling over how great the ride was. 9 hours later we went on the last roller coaster which was perfect timing because i was starting to feel slightly dizzy. i can't think of a better place to have spent my last wheaton fall break.

our back up plan if cedar point was closed

yayyy!

wicked twister

top thrill dragster