Sunday July 8: Gilroy Gardens amusement park

[Stacia] We had a long but fun-filled day today. Drove to Gilroy with the Fongs (well, we each drove our Odyssey vans there, packed with kids and gear!) and visited Gilroy Gardens (formerly known as Bonfante (?) Gardens, after the founder of Nob Hill grocery stores). It's a wonderful amusement park oriented to young children mostly, with a vegetables and plants theme. There's lots of shade, beautiful trees, plants and flowers everywhere, and lakes, waterfalls and water play areas. We had a wonderful time! It's the first time Cory and Niall have ever been to an amusement park (unless you count Seattle Center, where we rode the merry-go-round once) and they had a ball.

We started off on the merry-go-round, and then Cory, Kaitlyn and Britney rode on a very little kiddie ride: small fish that go gently up and down as they go around. You should have seen the grin on Cory's face - he was so thrilled.

Tynor loved the cars on tracks (that I remember very fondly from my youth, too - at other amusement parks) and we rode them three times! Niall wanted to drive himself and looked so grownup behind the wheel (yikes). Cory drove me reasonably capably (well, we did bump the center rail a lot but...he thought it was quite grand).

Notice how tolerant and helpful Tynor is being, with all these little kids and their rides! What a trooper. :-)

We had lunch near a water play area. Tynor got the world's biggest chicken Caesar salad (really, it looked like two salad bags put together...plus chicken!) ... and ate the entire thing. Ok, is he growing or what? Wow. (Not to mention the foot-long Subway sandwich at dinner but...we'll get to that later.) Cory was fascinated by all the water, but didn't want to get very wet. I got a big soaking when I thought I was helping him get a little spray of water - but water suddenly gushed out of the top all over me! But it felt great. It's pretty toasty in Gilroy this time of year. Niall took a few minutes to warm up to the idea of getting wet, but once encouraged and spattered with a bit of water (by Mom of course), he eventually stood under the dumping buckets over and over. Felt great, on that hot day!

We rode the Ferris Wheel and other rides, including as I said, multiple trips on the cars (old-fashioned cars and 50's cars).

Next we enjoyed a cool snack break - ice cream and (for Cory and me) frozen lemonade. Yummy!

One of our last rides was a trip on the Banana Split (like a Viking ship - back and forth waaaay up in the air) because Niall said I had promised he could go on it. Tynor decided to go with us if I was going to take Niall, so the three of us rode together. Niall was petrified as we started to really swing and clung to me, but was reassured enough that he was able to make it through the ride. Afterwards he was sure that he loved every minute and wanted to go again! Once was enough for my stomach, though, and we wanted to take the train around the park before we headed out.

The train was fun - a trip around the whole perimeter of the park, with one stop on the far side from where we started. Cory loved seeing everything going by below and just the experience of being on a train - cool!

We contacted Grace while at Gilroy Gardens and made plans to get some dinner and meet up with her and family at the park just behind her house (a gate in their backyard fence opens into the park). Although it was getting late by the time we drove up to Palo Alto and stopped for food, the little ones all napped in the cars so had some energy for the playground after we picnicked. The playground has been completely revamped since last time I was there (when Kellen and Tynor were little) and now includes a climbing wall, fun bars to swing on, several fireman poles, etc. It got lots of use, especially by Cory and Niall, while we caught up with Grace and Sean.

Rafy (nearly as tall as his dad!) and Gaby (nearly 15 now!) joined us as well. It was great to see all of them!

Here are all the kids together! We have group photos of the kids going way back. It's so fun to see how they've grown over the years. :-)

It got late much too quickly, and we still had the drive back to Redwood City plus packing up and hooking up the tent trailer to come back to PA, where we’ll spend two nights in the nicely remodeled cottage (once a garage) at Grace’s. Also had the complication of reattaching the holder for the leveler to the popup bumper, because we had to take it off to get the popup into the Fongs’ garage. It nearly bent the bumper as it scraped the driveway when I tried backing in the first time! I also managed to misplace the keys to the popup. But after a minor panic attack, I discovered them in a natural location – my toiletries basket, where I apparently stashed them in a hurry, thinking a little person might wander off with them if they were left out. Tynor and I have a new pact that we will ALWAYS put the popup keys back into their proper place in the glove compartment from now on. We don’t need more complications with everything else we’re already tracking and doing!

Got back to Grace’s pretty late, but the kids were troopers and settled into their new sleeping quarters quickly and off to sleep. Tomorrow will be a quieter day, to catch up on shopping, errands, etc. We’re also hoping to visit Stanford for a bit. It’s been years since I’ve been there and it’s always fun to see which new buildings have popped up as well as explore old haunts.