Day 9

Day 9 originally had us spending most of the time at Michigan's Adventure before hitting Craig's Cruisers and then undertaking a long drive down to Indiana. We'd obviously got the smaller park out of the way so it looked like we just had the one park today.

Another's Denny's breakfast, this basically gave me most of my calorie intake for the day.

Michigan's Adventure is a park we'd all wanted to do for a long time. Our club trips had gotten us to most of the big parks in the US; this one was never in an itinerary. It's a little out of the way and we'd only got it in because were hitting a lot of silly little parks in the state. One of the things that got me into this hobby was the documentary series on rollercoasters that the Discovery channel aired, and I'd ridden all the ones that featured on those shows except for Shivering Timbers, which is at this park.

The park is in the Cedar Fair chain but is seen as being the poor little brother of the bigger parks, not getting the same investment, again due to the location. But it's clear it's being run in a slightly different way. Look at how they've not considered the photo opportunity here hiding the cars behind bushes. You don't get this at Cedar Point.

Our first coaster was the corkscrew coaster and having gotten in early we had to queue to ride it. Fortunately we didn't have anyone around that could take the piss for doing so. As it turned out the ride was alright, the bracing was unnecessary.

Second up was the mouse coaster, which was running rather strangely with just one car on the track at any one time and the cars left to queue up in the station.

Christof's queue line moody shot.

I liked these.

Our next coaster was a tricky to photograph kiddy coaster that was a lot of fun and open to adults too. No need for any permission slip or negotiating with kids to ride this one.

The other kiddy coaster was one of 3 wooden rollercoasters that the park has. Zach's Zoomer was good fun too.

The park surrounds a large lake but we were soon to realise, not in a large circle. It's a C-shaped park with the eastern edge closed to public and used as a service road. This is a mistake.

Located by the suspended rollercoaster was the best water fountain of the trip. Cold, tasty and with no chlorine flavouring.

The SLC was suffering from operational issues, and delayed it's opening. We hung around waiting for it to open getting on the first train when it did. It then broke on the next train out so it was definitely the right thing to stick around. I think it reopened later in the day.

That's the service road, and the coaster is the Wolverine Wildcat. The path really needs to be open.

There is a train that closes the gap which at least is an alternative to walking all the way back around, but you have to wait for it and the capacity isn't great.

The Wildcat had the longest queue of the day, the operations weren't really good at all because the park only had one person checking all the seats. Safety is obviously paramount but they've killing the throughput with the decisions.

So onto the signature coaster, a monster out-and-back wooden ride by the name of Shivering Timbers. Yes, the third "timbers" coasters in the trip following Twisted and Mystic. This is the first of them opening in 1998

It's not an easy ride to photograph inside the park due to it's size, but the ride is really really good. Hill after hill after hill, all of which ride great. Even better we had no queues for this at all so we made sure we had several rides on it.

I spotted this in car park. The car was unsupervised ;)

Here's a shot of Shivering Timbers from the car park. It's how a coaster should look in my opinion.

Such a good ride!

It was really pleasing to have finally visited Michigan's Adventure. It's not a great park, but we still had an enjoyable time. Shivering Timbers is a very good reason on it's own to get here. I only hope the club plan a trip that gets them here.

So we now had the long drive south and were well ahead of schedule. So we looked for other things we could do on the way.

The first stop was Bendix County Park. A large public space that is home to a rather special rollercoaster, one that has a record that is going to be really tough to beat; it's been abandoned for nearly 50 years.

Located in the forest the ride was built in 1970 by the park owners. During the maiden run the two owners fell out, and they instantly made a decision that the ride will never open to the public. It's been sitting there abandoned ever since. We didn't know the exact location, with just the old guy at the entrance around to provide a clue that it was near the Studebaker Trees. So we split up and headed into the woods with me coming across the top of the first hill, scaring some deer on the way, and the others finding what we think is the station. The layout is a bit tricky to figure out as some of the track is missing.

Can you see why they're called the Studebaker trees? The ride is in the trees across the road from the D and E letters.

We really enjoyed our time here. We were visiting a coaster most would ignore and we had a proper feeling of adventure in finding and then exploring it. This is one of the reasons why I like this team. They're not just about the count, and racing from park to park. They're up for things like this!

We still had plenty of time to kill so we continued our search for something else. Another county fair came up in our search so we headed to that.

La Porte County fair was the one in question, and it looked to be starting its run.

The rides were being operated by Skerbeck.

The leaning Chance tower of LaPorte, not quite a catchy as it's Pisa cousin. It was apparent that the rides were still being set up. We really had gotten here for the start of the fair. So we weren't going to get to ride any of these, however there were no rollercoasters in the rides on site so we weren't overly upset.